Mulayam Singh's love for Higher Education

In a session that will go down in posterity, the Uttar Pradesh assembly met Wednesday just four days before its term expires to grant minority status to a university in minister Azam Khan's hometown Rampur. The last time such a thing happened was in 1957 when the house met to seek a vote of account on an interim budget of the state. Going by the grim persistence of the government in pursuing the matter of the university, it would appear that education must be a very high priority in Uttar Pradesh. The bill for setting up the university was passed by the state on May 18, 2005 following which it was sent to Governor T.V. Rajeshwar for his constitutional assent. However, the governor raised certain queries and the bill was returned to the government at least twice. Azam Khan eventually initiated fresh moves to set up the university in the private sector, for which he finally got the governor's green signal. Envisaged as a 297 acre campus on the outskirts of Rampur city, the university will have separate colleges for engineering, medicine, dentistry, law, home sciences and vocational training as well as routine degree courses.

As I said earlier, one could be pardoned for thinking that higher education must be a high priority for the Mulayam Singh government , except of course for the fact that the facts speak otherwise. One of the more news worthy items emanating about universities in the state is about the Lucknow University in the state capital, but the news from there does not have anything at all to do with the blossoming of learning. Rather it has a lot to do with a pro active Vice Chancellor , Ram Prakash Singh trying to cleanse the university which had become a den of criminals mostly owing allegiance to the ruling Samajwadi Party. The government of Mulayam Singh Yadav, instead of supporting this move to indeed make the University a den of learning rather than of crime confronted the VC for his stance which was affecting the young muscle men masquerading as student leaders, who found cheap food and lodgings in the university hostels. The beleaguered VC, badgered by the government, had to seek the protection of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court to carry out his duties.

On the other hand, the ranking of literacy and other social indicators in Uttar Pradesh is dismal. The newly launched economic daily titled “The Mint” has brought out an article titled “Is Uttar Pradesh turning into the new Bihar?”, India’s most populous state has been faring poorly on political, social and economic indicators, even falling behind Bihar in many of them. Although for for years. Bihar has been the by word for poor and apathetic governance , the Nitish Kumar administration has even according to his opponents has worked hard to briong about a turn around.

It is often said that the road to power in Delhi passes through Lucknow and Mulayam Singh Yadav has never concelaed his prime ministerial ambitions. If such are the credentials of a future Prime Minister , predicting the country’s future needs no crystal grazing. In the knowledge economy of the twenty first century, where information , education and knowledge is power and not muscle power and military power, a Prime Minister like Mulayam Singh schooled in the wrestling pits of U.P. villages wil lead India right back to the stone age…. And that is a shuddering thought…..

Seek Power, do not Snatch it

The Indian Express reports that Mulayam Singh Yadav, addressing an election rally has claimed that he would not beg for power but actually snatch it. With this statement having been made and recorded, all pretence that politics is matter of” serving” people has come to an end. Ironical though that so feudal a statement has come from some one who professes the politics of samajwad and looks up on Jaya Prakash Narayan as a mentor and who in turn looked to Gandhiji as his mentor. The very thought of Gandhiji snatching political power makes the stomach churn, albeit he had a lot of charisma and moral authority which he fully exploited for his ends.

Till recently, there was this game of pretence at least that people played – politics was all about service to the poor and the marginalized and positions of power and majorities in the parliament and state assemblies were needed only because a certain pro poor ideology needed to be pushed, that people wanted to be ministers, not because they provided perks and power but because they were the vehicles of serving the people.

Look at the context. The rally is a Dalit rally and the Dalit Passi community is being provoked or taunted, if you will to come and snatch the power that has eluded them thus far and make a grab for it. What is being preached here is social exclusion, not social inclusion, the politics of revenge and not reconciliation. In such a game, in such a power quest, service for the whole community, the whole citizenry, the whole of society is not even an ideal to be envisioned, let alone pursued through practical initiatives with some hope of realization.

Oppression of the Dalits is a social reality, no doubt but is snatching power the way or the solution. I can think of two examples that come to mind. One if of George Orwell’s famous book –Animal Farm. The animals are oppressed by the farmers, decide that they will one day overthrow the human masters who enslave them and so they do; but soon enough they develop their own pecking order and hierarchy and a new form of oppression begins.

The other example is of the dictatorship of the proletariat that began with the writings of Marx and Engels and was brought to some practice through the Russian revolution and the several satellite revolutions that followed, including of course the peasant revolution of the Maoists. In all these, the old oppressor class was over thrown but not to produce an egalitarian society but another oppressive one. In fact , hitherto , power might have been held by one class of people , after the supposed revolutions, power devolved in the name of democratic centralism to one single person – be it Mao , Lenin or Stalin or Ceausescu or several lesser lights.

Having looked at all this, I would rather opt for the South African way. Nelson Mandela stepped out after a life time in prison, took power and developed and fathered an inclusive society in which there was a place for all. He did not preach the rhetoric of revenge and violence, rather that of truth and reconciliation. Nelson Mandela certainly sought power but he did not snatch power. Snatching power is always dispossessing and self serving; seeking power still has at least the glimmer of serving a larger constituency than your own. That to me is all the difference. The difference that I discern as a Christian.