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ALL books ought to be original works of national needs and public interest. They are to be taken every year as a top priority without any time-bar till every library has at least five books. And nothing can be so principled as to fix the number of books to be selected on the basis of price. Every sensible person, I think, would agree with me that books including the number of books are to be chosen because of their quality and importance for the public and the nation. As a second priority it is good and desirable to select creative works though they do not fulfil the above conditions to encourage creative activity. But they as well as children’s books should be bought every two or three years.
   The government’s selection committee should be dominated by experts and well-informed persons of relevant subjects. The opinions of literary not well-versed in literature cannot be reliable. Still their inclusion in the committee is worth having. The present selection committee consists of nine members. Most of them are officials and have little time to go through books. Cursory glance or reading titles or lists of books should not be the criterion for such matters of vital importance. Even the members are not knowledgeable. And yet expertise is not sought from specialists. And what is of great necessity is that guidelines or principles or criteria for the selection of books by experts and men of great learning at the highest level that is at the national level.
   As quality books, standard knowledge, authentic information or quality learning materials are an essential condition of quality education, there should be no bar to have those from any source or author. And NCTB and its Independent Text-book Evaluation Committee are a harmful influence, an unwelcome sign of control and regulation, a bar to free and independent flow of information and knowledge.
   Members of ITEC are officials who have little time and no or little expert knowledge to do justice to such vital matters. They are chief sources of corruption and are the cause of corruption in the educational institutions in our country. They are vulnerable to wire-pulling of high-ups, ministers, politicians and persons of vested interests. Their greatest wrong-doing is that they are the sole agency for low quality education particularly up to intermediate grade and they set a standard by laying the foundations of learning in the earlier stages at the primary stage, a standard which is considerably below the desired level. That stage becomes the measure for secondary education which in turn, shapes the yardstick for education at HSC. Thus the low standard is maintained through all the stages. Low quality teachers manage teachers at these tiers. It is not felt that highly proficient teachers are needed. And teachers are following universities as their models.
   Those pre-degree or pre-university standards again determine the standard of education, i.e. a low standard for which universities and their teachers boast vainly. The universities and their teachers do not try or go for bettering their standard. As a result, the teachers become complacent and conceited even though who have the highest degrees continue their research activity and devote their life to further progress or advancement of their learning as is the case with most teachers of the West.
   A recent statement in December 2008 by an NCTB chairman will vindicate the views. He said that students should be allowed to study only those books published and approved by NCTB and ITEC. Because if a student of class VII reads the books of class IX what books will he read when he is promoted to that class and books for each class were written according to the learning ability of each age-group. And the ministry of education supported it. That it is absurd, is only too obvious. It could be said conversely that if a student of class VII can study books of class IX and get better marks than from those of his own class, then what is the harm? We know that age group learning capacity is determined by the average learning ability of an age group, not for the good or brilliant students. And it does not give any scope to average students to improve by getting better information or knowledge and not at all to good student who have to suffer with mediocre learning materials by the imposition of NCTB. I am sure and any sensible person will think so that those who obtain a GPA of 4 or 5 in SSC and HSC have not got them by studying text-books of NCTB only. They secure them either through studying books meant for higher classes or from different first-rate sources of knowledge. In such situation there is hardly any reason why NCTB should play role in quality education. If NCTB is to exist, its functions should be absolutely for the prescription of syllabuses and related activities and publishing books following the syllabuses. The educational institutions should under no circumstances, be directed and compelled to buy only the textbook board’s books, even though, the board supplies books free to primary schools. While government publications can be helpful for regulation of prices of books in the country, those must be of high standard. That may be ensured through keen competition of the highest number of competent writers and selected by a committee of outstanding learning and subject experts and specialists at the national level. To allure the well-qualified and well-informed writers, higher remuneration may be offered. NCTB may also be entrusted with the responsibility to oversee that learning materials published by any other source does not contain anything prejudicial to our country. Then it can prohibit the publication or ask the writer to expunge the objectionable materials.
   The selection and supply of books to educational institutions by the ministry of education and its project offices follow more or less the procedures of Jatiya Grantha Kendra and public library without realising their fundamental differences. Public libraries or other non-educational libraries are principally for the educated readers and operate as supernumerary agencies or suppliers of supplementary facilities. But books or libraries in the lower tiers of education providing foundation course are necessary and obligatory. They are for children’s mental and character development, for fostering emotional and moral qualities that make a person. At these levels education is to equip the learners with intelligence and knowledge for self-improvement and self-government, to make them handle situations and problems of life in the best possible way for a better and useful individual and social life. A part from that base sows the seeds of national character Bangladeshi entity, cultures, our ideologies, aspirations and goals. So utmost care, caution and expertise are necessary in this regard.
   In the project-development of selected colleges (government and non- government) under the ministry of education Tk 2.40 crore was spent to purchase books for libraries of government colleges, but not for private colleges although the latter’s need was most pressing and development of their libraries was a must. And books were selected not by principles or guidelines but by wire pulling of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Books procured were of low standard and useless and at a very high price. For instance, a French woman wrote a book with pictures, descriptions, etc about a rickshaw puller. Each book was bought for Tk 1,000 and two for each of the 152 government colleges and what was stunning, and it is no wonder, is that those books worth Tk 2.40 crore were later on declared worthless and of no use. Another example of corruption and exorbitant price and utter unsuitability for the secondary school students is the purchase of 2,317 sets of Bangladesher Swadhinata Juddher Dalil Patra edited by Hasan Hafizur Rahman. The price of each set was quoted at Tk 15,000 although it could not have been more than Tk 3,000 or Tk 4,000. The sets were given, it is said, as reference books for general knowledge of students. The responsibility for buying those sets was given to the information ministry, not to education ministry.
   As an educationalist I have noted with alarm that books for educational institutions across the country are selected by education ministry on political considerations, or political pressure or selected books written by stooges of politicians. I have also noticed with dismay important posts, consultancies filled up and contractual appointments were made from of a particular region or from a syndicate of persons having little ability and required qualifications. Some of these factors including low quality of learning materials downgrade the standard of education and Communicative English, a product of fertile but obtuse imagination of such persons, has destroyed the very process of learning English, and even correct English. Even then if educational institutions follow and are developed in the light of necessities and keeping in view to put right what is bad or wrong or defective and restore things to better order or make changes for the better, I am convinced that quality education will be attained although it would take some time. The process is to begin now.
   Nuruzzaman Chowdhury has served under the ministries of education and establishment in different capacities and taught at a number of public institutions. He retired as the head of the Directorate of Inspection and Audit of the education ministry.

A YEAR on from the election of Barack Obama as United States president, the conflicts that dominated Washington’s concern under his predecessor are still raging – and even increasing in intensity. This is particularly true of the arc of insecurity that stretches from the Middle East through to southwest Asia, where – from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Israel-Palestine and Iran – the reality and potential of violence have hardly been diminished as a result of the change of administration.
   Moreover, alongside the high-intensity conflicts where Washington is directly or by proxy involved in this region, there are other slow-burn insurgencies that often receive less attention than they deserve. The persistent rebellion in India of the Maoist guerrilla movement known as the Naxalites is one such. A reason for paying more heed to this issue is that the evolving nature of the Naxalite conflict – including the Indian government’s approach in attempting to combat the movement – may represent a more accurate indicator of future trends in global insecurity even than the al-Qaeda network.
   
   A potent legacy
   THE internal United States debate about its future strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular has as much of its specific focus the current status of al-Qaeda, and whether it still represents a major threat to US security interests.
   The argument over whether (and by how much) to increase US deployments in Afghanistan – prompted by General Stanley A McChrystal’s request for at least 40,000 more troops – is now complicated further by the political fallout of the now aborted rerun of Afghanistan’s presidential election. The effect of the confirmation of Hamid Karzai as the election winner and thus president for a third term in office (after the withdrawal on November 1 of his rival, Abdullah Abdullah) makes it even harder for the pro-‘surge’ advocates to make their case (see Charles A Kupchan & Steven Simon, ‘Pull the Plug on the Afghan Surge’, Financial Times, November 3).
   Many of those who oppose such a move argue that the US is making a strategic mistake by seeing the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups as the main focus of its efforts. These are so embedded in local societies on either side of the border that they cannot, so the argument goes, be defeated in the conventional sense. It is far more important in this view to concentrate specifically on the al-Qaeda leadership and that movement’s most determined adherents. By doing so, the US military will lead the task of defeating terrorism and making the world a safer place.
   This argument, though yet to be won, can be seen as a significant departure from the dominant thinking of George W Bush’s ‘war on terror’ – especially its tendency to describe any radical paramilitary group anywhere in the world as ‘terrorist’. The logic of this view, embraced with glee by the neo-conservatives that provided the Bush administration’s ideological fuel, was the radical division of the world into two absolutely polarised sides: with us or against us, there is no room for doubt or compromise.
   The search for a more nuanced and targeted approach reflects a degree of new thinking from Barack Obama. The problem he faces is that the mentality of the ‘war on terror’ has proved so influential, including by other states facing their own domestic insurgencies, that it is very difficult to change course.
   
   A hidden rage
   A CASE in point is the New Delhi government’s developing assault on the Naxalite rebels in India.
   The Naxalite movement has its origins in a land dispute near the village of Naxalbari in the northern part of West Bengal in 1967. This lasted several years and appeared to have been brought under control. But later, a number of leftist groups fired by a Maoist ideology made links with disadvantaged peoples in parts of rural eastern India; in the early 2000s, this coalesced into a renewed movement (see Ajai Sahni, ‘India and its Maoists: failure and success’, March 20, 2007)
   Since then, the Naxalites have grown in power and influence. They are often brutal in their methods but have managed to win support from huge numbers of marginalised people, in part because of the great brutality inflicted by security forces in the areas the guerrillas control. The Indian authorities are increasingly concerned at the threat the movement poses to the country’s internal security – and even its much-vaunted economic miracle. For the state, and much of the economic elite, the Naxalite/Maoist rebels are simply terrorists who must be put down with whatever force is necessary (see ‘A world in revolt’, February 12).
   Since then, the Naxalites or Maoists have grown in power and influence, as part of a conflict with the authorities in which there has been great brutality on both sides. They are reported to be active in 220 of India’s 602 districts across fifteen of India’s twenty-eight states.
   Much of the activity is spread across India’s so-called ‘red corridor’, which stretches from the Nepalese border down to the southern state of Karnataka. A current report says: ‘With a force of 15,000 armed cadres, they control an estimated one-fifth of India’s forests. They are also believed to have 50,000 underground activists. Around 100,000 people, including the intelligentsia, are associated with various front organisations in different parts of the country’ (see Prakash Nanda, ‘India’s deadly war within’, UPI Asia Online, November 4).
   The problem with this view is that the guerrillas draw on the genuine injustices inflicted on poor Indians in rural areas, including (for example) the many thousands dispossessed of their lands and livelihoods by mining corporations and new industries (see Arundhati Roy, ‘The heart of India is under attack’, Guardian, October 30). These injustices are part of the entrenched and increasing disparities in wealth and poverty that India’s breakneck race for growth has created.
   The war between the Indian state’s security forces (including the armed militias it has organised) and the Naxalites is taking place amid this landscape of desperate poverty and inequality. The rebels’ tactics include the use of roadside-bombs and ambushes, which have helped them kill over 900 Indian security personnel in 2006-09. In the period from April-June 2009 alone, they killed 112 security personnel in four key regions of combat: Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa; over three days in early June, twenty police lost their lives in two attacks (see Divy Khare, ‘Naxalites strike again, kill 10 cops in Jharkhand’, Times of India, June 13). In Maharashtra, two Naxalites lured a police patrol into a trap and in an hours-long fight, seventeen policemen died (see Jim Yardley, ‘A growing Maoist rebellion vexes India’, International Herald Tribune, October 31).
   The authorities are now being shocked by years of accelerating conflict into raising the level of their response. New Delhi is mounting a large-scale operation – Operation Green Hunt – that is expected to involve some 70,000 paramilitary forces. The aim is partly to counter the spread of Naxalite influence beyond the most densely forested areas that have been their core domain into open countryside; Operation Green Hunt seeks to force the rebels back into the forests where they can (it is supposed) be more easily contained (see Anuj Chopra, ‘Jungle lair of the Maoist rebels’, November 5).
   The carefully planned operation could take several years to complete. At its root is the firm belief that the target groups, however strong their support, constitute a threat to the emergence of the new India as a global economic power. In such circumstances, strategic ores must be mined and factories built on suitable land. Those in the way – leftist rebels or local villagers – simply cannot be allowed to interfere with India’s onward march to western-style modernity (see ‘China and India: heartlands of global protest’, August 7, 2008).
   It is especially pertinent to note that this rebellion has caught India somewhat by surprise. At the very time that India has finally embraced the consumer society, when burgeoning cities are replete with shopping-malls, entertainment venues and gated communities – violent extremists appear, as if from nowhere, to wreck the party and threaten the future (see Manmohan Singh, “’A Systemic Failure’”, OutlookIndia, November 4). The fact that much of what is happening can be understood as a desperate response from intensely marginalised people is discounted.
   
   A warming conflict
   THE import of the Naxalites and other Maoist groups in India may go far beyond the major internal-security problem they pose. From another perspective, they represent an early example of the kinds of radical response that could – if present dominant policies continue – become far more widespread in the coming decades (see ‘A world on the edge’, January 29).
   In the 2010-40 period, climate change will affect the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world in ever more pervasive ways. As the continents warm up much faster than the oceans and the croplands dry out, the consequence will be a sharp decline in the land’s ecological ‘carrying-capacity’ (see Shanta Barley, ‘A World 4 degrees C warmer’, New Scientist, October 3)
   This is also a world where there are enormous gaps in living-standards, life-chances and access to resources; where 10 per cent of the world’s people have over 85 per cent of the household wealth; and where hundreds of millions of people in the global south (and north) are marginalised and resentful. The results, if such trends are allowed to continue, will be a combination of more fragile and failing states with intense migratory pressures; in turn this will reinforces the tendency of the world’s elites to seek to ‘close the castle gates’ (see ‘A tale of two towns’, June 21).
   In this perspective, the rational approach would be led by an awareness of how the dangers of socioeconomic divisions and environmental limits make a new definition of security essential (see ‘A world in need: the case for sustainable security’, September 10). A continuation of the current path may mean that al-Qaeda will be seen as a short-term problem that withered away – and the Naxalite rebellion as the prototype conflict for the 21st century.
   openDemocracy. Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England.

Series victory against Zimbabwe

The batsman, bowler and captain Shakib Al Hasan has once again done it for Bangladesh. Coupled with his brilliant all-round display, Hasan has led from the front and won the ODI series against Zimbabwe comprehensively, despite being in deficit after losing the inaugural match.
   However, the contributions of Tamim Iqbal, Mohd Ashraful, Rakibul Hasan, Abdur Razzak, Enamul Haque, Mahmudullah, Naeem Islam and others cannot be discounted who have excelled themselves in crisis as well. Hasan has successfully moulded the gifted players into a single cohesive, united unit and the result is there for all to see.
   Congratulations to the Bangladesh team and we are looking forward to see the country reach the Mount Everest of the cricketing world.
   Kajal Chatterjee
   Kolkata

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