On the proposed rise of the HECI from the ashes of the UGC

The future of our children is under grave threat if the current Govt. of our country has its way and passes this draft `HECI Act' which will hand over the control of their education from our academics to our bureaucrats. This draft Act reads more like a set of procedures required to be followed for changing your name which has been mis-spelt in your passport (almost surely due to some clerical error), than like anything that has to do with education. As it stands, the `Commission' is capable of and authorised to giving higher priority to include `fuzzy logic' than `free probability' as an elective course! (This jargon is merely to underline the fact that many people, who may not even know the meanings of these terms, might well be making such horrific decisions while framing the syllabus for advanced courses!)

As for the constitution of this commission:

Article 3(3) says The Commission shall consist of a Chairperson, Vice Chairperson and twelve other Members to be appointed by the Central Government. The Secretary of the Commission will act as the Member-Secretaryⁱ.

Article 3(5) says The Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Members shall be scholars being persons of eminence and standing in the field of academics and research possessing leadership abilities, proven capacity for institution building, governance of institutions of higher learning and research and deep understanding on issues of higher education policy and practice.

Article 3(8) shows that only 2 members need to be serving Professors of Universities, reputed for research and knowledge creation.

I seriously doubt the existence of 12 people who would satisfy conditions 3(3), 3(5) and 3(8) of the draft Act, and be likely to be hired as faculty at institutes of excellence like IIT(Bombay) or IISc purely on the basis of their academic credentials. 

Afurther ingenious feature of this HECI is the requirement of a yearly evaluation of academic performance of the HEIs (no doubt on a doc file in a prescribed proforma).The preparation of the necessary reports will eat into the precious little time available to faculty for research. As it is, faculty at HEIs spend increasing amounts of their time filing reports rather than doing research!

This suggestion/fait accompli is yet another instance of our govt.’s strategy of giving a new name to an existing concept or scheme, and not really doing anything later with it, except pointing to the creation of this scheme as one of their achievements. Disability activists are familiar with PWD being re-christened Divyangjan, Accessible India Campaign becoming Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan ...

I, for one, am totally opposed to this proposed `draft act'. As the Tamil saying goes, leaving education in the care of our babus is like a case of `korangu kaila poo malai' (ie, a flower garland in the hands of a monkey).

Already this govt. has changed the existing method, of direct payment of the paltry wages `paid' to research students in elite institutions, to their favourite toy, the Aadhar route (resulting in the monthly stipend typically coming in several months late!). The tension to which our young research scholars are being subjected is in stark contrast to the enthusiasm with which several of our aspiring scientists joined the March for Science held in major cities of India on April 14^th, 2018.

It may not be out of place here to quote from the appeal made by the organisers of those marches:

In India the concerted efforts by some interest groups to undermine science continues unabated. Unscientific ideas and superstitious beliefs are being propagated with accelerated pace. Ridiculous claims are being made about an imaginary glorious past ignoring the true contributions based on historical evidence. These are acting against the propagation of scientific temper among the people. Opposing them is a responsibility of all citizens as per Article 51A of the Indian Constitution.

Support for education in general and for scientific research in particular remains unbelievably low in India. While most countries spend over 6% of their GDP on education and 3% of their GDP on scientific and technological research, in India the figures are below 3% and 0.85% respectively. As a result, a large section of the country's population has remained illiterate or semi-literate even after 70 years of independence. Our college and university system is reeling under acute shortages of infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff, and funds for carrying out research. Science-funding agencies like CSIR and DST, pushed into acute fund crisis, are unable to disburse even committed support to students and research projects.

Let me conclude this rambling rant with three not unrelated observations/comments:

1. Compare the scrutiny undergone by the credentials of one nominated for possible fellowship of any of our science academies with those of any minister of MHRD; Does it make any sense to: (a) have the latter group decide on matters affecting the study of the former? or for (b) presidents of the academies to plead with a minister to leave education to people who have been educating generations for decades rather than to party loyalists?

2. Ayesha Kidwai has this to say in her scathing critique on this draft Act: 

In its Press Release, the government has cited the bill as “downsizing the 

scope of the Regulator”, “removing interference in the management issues of the educational institutions”, and "improving academic standards", but a reading of the Bill, actually reveals the opposite intention, that will have a disastrous effect on the access that India’s young people will have to higher education, As well as the creation of jobs in the education sector."

3. And the track record of our Govt. in translating a passed Bill into ground

reality is not too reassuring! For example, India's Rights of Persons with Disability was passed in 2016, while we became a signatory in 2007 to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD) - the purpose of which Bill is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity. We are still in the state where a child with a locomotor disability is unable to go unaided to her school just a few blocks away in Delhi or Pune, for that matter, and is expected to attend classes on the third floor of a school without elevators? What price our Right to Education Act - which made education a fundamental right of every child aptly on April Fool’s Day of 2010!

MSJE101: Reasonable accommodation

The number in the title is to suggest that this blogpost might be part of a first course to our MSJE just as A101 might be a first course in algebra. The first chapter in the text prescribed for the course might begin with how the  UNCRPD defines this notion and go on to explain the terms used in this definition:

“Reasonable accommodation” means necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Let me cut to the chase and get to my specific gripe. Briefly, as reward for my mathematical research accomplishments, I was chosen, about a decade ago, to receive a handsome fellowship from the Dept. of Science and Technology. This Fellowship allowed me to spend an almost obscenely large amount of money each year on my research - buy books, computers, travel for conferences anywhere in the world where I had been invited to talk, etc. Unfortunately, within a decade of my falling victim to multiple scleroses, I found that I needed to be assisted for many things - tying shoelaces, tearing open the little plastic/paper bags in which planes served you sugar, pepper, salt, after dinner mints, etc. All these stupid problems resulted in rendering solo travel unfeasible and my consequently having to turn down several invitations to international conferences dealing with precisely my areas of interest/expertise.

When I spoke to my then Director (normally positive and receptive to my needs re accessibility), he said I had best seek permission from the Secretary, DST - whom I knew from having served together for three years on the Executive Council of the Indian Academy of Sciences. As narrated in a past blogpost, http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-for-price-of-one.html, he enabled me to have my wife accompany me on all work-related travel, with the cost of her accompanying me being met from the contingency grant component of my fellowship. In fact, he said that DST left the decision making to the director of my institute. And my then director was happy to interpret the rules in my favour. In fact, not long after, consequent to a horrifying experience (see my post http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.com/2012/01/breath-of-fresh-air.html) when we flew back from Hyderabad in 2010, my then director even consented to my request/demand that when we flew `on my fellowship', he waive the government requirement that when scientists were reimbursed for flights they took `on duty', they should fly Air India.

From that time to the date of my `super-annuation' last year, I enjoyed the reasonable accommodation, extended to me, via my then director, by that past secretary of DST, by permitting my wife to travel with me  to  academic conferences in Trivandrum (now re-christened  Thiruvananthapuram), Bangalore (Bengaluru), Kolkata (Calcutta), Delhi, Tirunelveli, Hyderabad, Kanpur, and even Berkeley, California and Toronto in North America, and Aberystwyth, in Wales, UK. I have advertised the broad-mindedness of my institute and of DST in extending this `reasonable accommodation' to me elsewhere in this blog and even in acknowledgements in the foreword to some of the recent math books I wrote.

Just as the phrase `super-annuation' reminds one of the phrases `use by' or `expiry date', it also seemed to galvanise the thus far silent auditors of the institute into keenly scrutinising the institute using the fellowship thus. This has had two repercussions: (i) my current director feels constrained by the auditors' qualms to have my wife's ticket covered by my fellowship; and (ii) the spectre of the arbitrary `Air India rule' again threatens to haunt me.

Even after `super-annuation' (in April 2017), I am apparently not perceived as being totally useless: thus my named fancy fellowship has been extended till the end of 2018; and I receive invitations to lecture all over India. But I will no longer be able to have my wife by my side to take care of the numerous personal needs necessitated by my `disability' or the freedom to fly Indigo which has taken great care of me and my wheelchair for many years, unless I pay for both our tickets from my pocket - even though my host institution would have promised, in their invitation to me,  that they would pay for my ticket, and there is all that money promised by my fellowship! And these `rules' of the Govt. are so arbitrary and not applied uniformly. For instance, the age of super-annuation is different in different institutions - 65 in the IITs and IISERs, and 60 in TIFR and my institution. (Even in my institute, I have known people super-annuating at 60,  a few at 62, a smaller number at 64, and even fewer at 65, these decisions supposedly being based on how productive they are perceived to be!) Incidentally there are three academies of science in India, and while the one based in Delhi insists on the `Air India rule', the one based in Bangalore apparently has no problem with their Fellows flying Indigo on `academy work'.

Let me conclude this long lament by explicitly pointing out how or why my being denied the accommodations extended to me by the old DST secretary and my former director is directly violative of the `reasonable accommodation' recommended by the UNCRPD.

To put it in a nutshell, I have spent 46 years of my life doing mathematics, in the process acquiring a specialisation with a flavour created uniquely by my particular trajectory in the study and research in my areas of specialisation. A mathematician at my level of expertise/competence would consider the freedom to participate, in conferences all over the world dealing with areas where (s)he has something to learn as well as contribute, a fundamental right. To exercise this right, I would need India to modify her rules so that whenever I am invited to attend a meeting/conference, I should be able to fly with my wife in a carrier of my choice, and have both our bills paid by whoever invited me. This should be done if India claims to be a signatory to the UNCRPD.

Pearls before swine, leading horses to water, when only man is vile, etc.

IMAGINE: if

(1) public establishments - banks, restaurants, grocery stores -
could live up to their frequent promise to `assure you of our best
service at all times';

(2) if the you in (1) above included older people with locomotor problems,
even people with some manner of disability - locomotor/vision/hearing;

(3) that all the people mentioned in (2) above had access to all
facilities - electronic machines, toilets, ... - available to `normal'
people;

(4) and if all this could be achieved by an email which would
get people with the expertise to take one look at the establishment
and tell you just what needs to be done.


Guess what! this is and has been possible in Chennai for many years. The
Disability Rights Alliance is a group of people who have been freely
offering such advice for years - without even charging for travel costs incurred - and it has been a case of pearls before swine. People say `sure, this has got to be done' but have done nothing! Like `taking a horse to water, but ...'.  I should stop maligning animals unnecessarily, when only man is vile!

I guess the problem is that DRA doesn't throw in a few ramps and disabled
friendly toilets for free! Anyone heard of  CSR?

Anyway, the offer is still there: interested people have only got to look
up DRA with Google's help and send that email!

The cause for this rant is that I have been having problems with both banks I have had an account with for years and have spent the last two days in their parking lots in the Chennai mid-May sun. Here is a photograph of the Adyar branch of one of those banks which explains why I was at their Mylapore branch yesterday - which branch had the inevitable `only one step'! When will people realise that anything at least as large as one is inaccessible for a wheelchair user? Why should ALL branches of ALL Banks be inaccessible?
   

is

Open letter/plea to Mr. Pronoy Roy

Dear Mr. Roy,

I would like to ask a favour of you. Let me first introduce myself properly. I am (was?) a moderately accomplished and suitably decorated mathematician twenty years ago. Then I got multiple sclerosis 15 years ago, and slowly lost mobility. Ever since then, I have devoted a fair amount of time in disability activism. Incidentally, there are many such activists spread all over India, e.g., Shivani Gupta (Puttaparathi), Dr. Satendra Singh (Delhi), Vaishnavi Jayakumar (Chennai), and Muralidharan (Delhi) - all a lot more progressive minded than just about the only person with disability (PWD, from Delhi) who is ever consulted by the news media, including NDTV.

It is true, but rarely highlighted by the Press, that PWD have suffered at almost each of the series of brainwaves inflicted on the nation by the Modi-Jaitley duo, for instance:

(a) Demonetisation: did they spare a thought for a wheelchair user being forced to go at least once a week to a bank whose branches and ATMs are invariably totally inaccessible, or a blind person who suddenly has to deal with a new set of notes where notes of different denominations cannot be easily distinguished;

(b) Aadhar linking: People with various kinds of disability have difficulty in
recording a clear set of fingerprints: eg., a leprosy cured person may only
have a stump!

(c) GST: We saw calipers, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs being taxed at 18%, while Agarbattis incurred 0% tax.

(d) Public transport: Wheelchair users like me have no access to public transport: the floors of metros and platforms do not match, it is impossible to get on a bus or a local train... We have to go by autos; and the rise in petrol/diesel prices does not make this an attractive option, especially when your disability makes it difficult to be gainfully employed.

(e) The whole issue of playing the National Anthem at the end of a movie when wheelchair users got manhandled for not standing up and marking their respect for the flag or got shouted down by apoplexic generals for not keeping their hand on their chest during the playing of the anthem.

(f) Budget: The budget has made no mention of provisions to fulfil the promises inherent in the RPD Bill of 2016, the Accessible India Campaign or Right to Education. Where are the funds to make a promised number b of buidings in c cities accessible by the end of 2018? (Incidentally the numbers b and c are woefully small and inadequate to make the large number N of our towns truly accessible!)


Now for that favour: I would love to see NDTV run a show (of the sort used in the Major Bakshi apoplexy episode discussed in (e)) with Modi and Jaitley occupying two of the six boxes and being bombarded on issues as above by Shivani, Satendra, Vaishnavi and Murali (occupying the remaining four boxes).

Looking forward to an early and positive response,
Thanks, and regards,
Sunder

One step forward, two steps back

I have been a wheel-chair user since 2010. Consequently the railway, metro and buses in India have been a closed book to me since 2010. The only way I can traval is by cars (private or large taxis like an Innova which will have room to transport my wheelchair and care giver). Or I can fly on our airlines, fervently hoping that my (motorised) wheelchair will safely make it to my destination without its battery having been at the receiving end of a hatchet job by airport security personnel.

We have been making periodic attempts for several years at making the local metros, buses and roads/pavements accessible, and our successes can be listed on the head of a not particularly fat pin. Recently, some of us got to talk to the DG of CISF and found him very reasonable and amenable as we talked to him about problems we as PWD faced during air travel, the only (and not very cheap!) form of travel that is usable by us some of the time. I'd like to believe this catalysed two meetings of the big brass in the business of air travel, security, etc. After the last one, Nipun Malhotra posted on fb that he was now able to travel all the way sitting in his wheelchair, and I confirmed with him that I should not have a problem doing the same thing with mine.

On the other hand, the last of these Delhi meetings with accessible noises was held on Nov. 22, and not even four weeks later, a computer scientist friend of mine was prevented by the Air India ground staff from boarding a flight from Bengaluru to Delhi citing security concerns allegedly stemming from his battery-operated wheelchair. Mr. O.P. Singh, can you please have your rules, about carrying one's own wheelchair on our planes, uniformly and universally available? Among the security personnel of an airline/airport I have seen, I must have heard more than a 100 different and original interpretations of the rules concerning motorised wheelchairs. Will you please help remove this ever-threatening sword of Damocles hanging over wheelchair users trying to fly in our skies.

Although private airlines have also been guilty of making things difficult for PWD (eg, the famous Spicejet vs. Jeeja Ghosh incide, and even Indigo of late, which I tend to use because I felt they were disabled-friendly, it is our National Carrier that never fails to surprise me in their rudeness/disabled-unfriendliness. A classic instance of this is when an ex-Air Force pilot who lost his legs in an accident went on AI for a meeting in Singapore, only to discover to his horror that AI could not find his wheelchair when they got to Singapore, and they offered him no help in acquiring a wheelchair for temporary use. Unfortunately, when anybody's work related travel is funded by Govt. sources, there is a GO that such travel must be on AI. I suppose this is one (only?) way of keeping AI afloat! 

Just as they fixed Kaushik Majumdar on his way from his base in Bengaluru to Kolkata, they did such a hatchet job on my wheelchair on my Hyderabad-Chennai flight while returning from the International Congress of Mathematicians held at Hyderabad. All the wires connected to the battery had been systematically yanked out. As this was discovered in Chennai where this wheelchair had been made, I could have the damage rectified quickly. Since that day, I have never flown AI. 

Doctor

In the Indian Statistical Institute, when the honorific Professor or Doctor is used without a name following it, it always refers to its founder P.C. Mahalanobis or its leading statistician C.R. Rao, it being considered a sacrilege to suggest equating anybody else to one of these paragons. In my house, the word Doctor, if unqualified, always refers to Dr. Krishnamoorthy Srinivas, also respectfully called Chief or Professor in his Dept. of Neurology at the Voluntary Health Centre. Ever since I walked into his clinic after realising I had some neurological problem, I was captivated by him. On the one hand, his walls may be overflowing with his various degrees and assorted certificates, his table overflowing with photographs of various distinguished foreign doctors who visited his clinic, and he may seem to lose little time before letting you know of the prestigious schools and colleges he had studied at, and the rich and famous who have sought his expertise and help.

On the other hand, once you get past these superficial irritants, you discover you are in the presence of something rare that you cannot find for any amount of money: the very essence of the `family doctor', unfortunately a fast dying breed. The reason for this piece now is that he unfortunately passed away last week, and I want to sing his praises to the world. even if I have said some of this briefly in an earlier blogpost (in http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2012/01/second-career.html, where I describe my first meeting with him as one of my main `life-changing moments'.) I want the several immoral money-grabbing charlatans that call themselves `doctors' today to know what goes into the making of an exemplary upholder of the Hippocratic Oath.

How many doctors today
* give you their mobile phone number at your first meeting and ask you to always fix up an appointment first, and are in their cabin at least 5 min. prior to the time agreed upon?
* give you as much time as you need, and never rush you to leave?
* always enquire about the other members of your family and their well-being?
* never bring up the topic of money, and when you insist on asking him how much you should pay for his time, gives you the name of his favourite charity to which you may donate as much as you wish?

Whenever any of us (in my immediate family) required to consult a medical specialist of any sort, I would ask his advice. I still see an eye specialist recommended by him. Just two weeks ago, I needed an orthopedic specialist about a broken arm but Doctor was unfortunately not in the best of health - and yet he sent a name and a mobile phone number to my wife through his wife. When I saw that doctor, I could see he was of the same vintage. When I mentioned the indifferent health of Dr. Srinivas, he said `but I saw him just the other day in the Club'. The happy resolution of my orthopedic problem turns out to have been a parting gift from Doctor to an ever-appreciative patient of 17 years' standing. It appears that I can no longer postpone addressing the question of what I would do with my MS when I can no longer stop by his ever-welcoming room at the VHS. You will be missed so much by so many people in so many ways, Doctor!

bE inclusivE

I first learnt the word `inclusion' in the context of set theory in mathematics. Here are two definitions that I'd like to see someone make some of our netas in Delhi write 100 times as an imposition.

A set (or collection) A is included in a set B if every member of A is a member of B.

Two sets A and B are equal if each is included in the other; i.e., they should have the same members.

For example, the set D of residents of Delhi is included in the set I of Indians. However, I is not equal to D since there are some members of I who do not have the good fortune of inhaling the polluted air of Delhi on a daily basis and instead live in `remote places' like Mumbai, Bengaluru or Chennai and are thus not members of D.

Some people are, however, still under the erroneous impression that I is equal to D. In case you are curious about why I am going on in this fashion, I will be more than glad to elaborate. As I do, you will find repeated confusing of I with D by members of D.

To start with, let me remind you that I spend a fair bit of my time being concerned with the work of a group calling ourselves the Disability Rights Alliance (DRA in the sequel). My friends in this group are largely from Chennai. All of this must be repeated ad nauseum, since we seem to be invisible to some of the more prominent disability activists in Delhi. For instance, a horrendous RPD Bill was almost passed in 2014, but many of us from DRA were at the forefront of a concerted campaign to bar the passage of this bill and in having it referred to a Standing Committee. This same Standing Committee almost fell into the I=D fallacy, and a further social media barrage from many of us made them avoid that error and come down to Chennai and another city in South India. They listened to our carefully prepared presentation and incorporated many of our suggestions in the report they gave the Govt. Unfortunately, the Govt. almost completely ignored that report and passed an RPD Bill - 2016 which still carried many faux pas of the 2014 precursor - and one of the oft-quoted Delhi disability activists was quoted by the press as hailing this landmark decision - even as many of us rued its divergence from the UNCRPD, in word and spirit.

And now I shall come to the Fall of 2017. Last month, we came to learn that the DG of CISF (Director General of Central Industrial Security Force) was going to be attending a meeting in Chennai. Now there had been many horror stories about indignities suffered in air travel by PWD, and CISF is in charge of security in airports. I was asked to pursue the possibility of some of us presenting our woes to the DG. After many emails and phone calls, I cajoled them into letting us present our point of view. That attempt saw the DG seeming to be very sympathetic and pro-active, going to the extent of asking me to send his office a copy of the presentation I had prepared of our points of view.

I followed this up with two or three mails where I pointed out at least two instances of passengers with disability suffering insensitive treatment at the hands of the security guards, and saying the time was ripe for a team from CISF and a group of disability activists to sit together to iron out their differences. Imagine my surprise at receiving an email on Oct. 4th, inviting me to exactly such a meeting on Oct. 11th. I wrote back saying nothing had been said about who would pay my airfare, and that it was clearly not proper for decisions to be made which would affect all Indians, with such decision-making being based only on opinions of Delhi-ites. To this, I got another email saying airfare could not be paid to people coming from outside Delhi, and suggesting that I provide them with names of some people based in Delhi. So I send desperate emails and phone calls to my PWD friends in Delhi to ensure our concerns would be well represented.

India is one of the most e-literate countries, and there is no excuse for not having this and all such meetings Skype enabled so interested people from any city, not even necessarily in India, can participate in them. There is absolutely no justification for excluding people on the basis of the city they live in, especially when technology makes it so easy to be e-inclusive!

I just heard yesterday's meeting went off quite satisfactorily and that a follow-up meeting is scheduled, which will be graced by the Minister of MSJE, and more importantly, will be accessible by skype to members of I-D! If this had been the case with yesterday's meeting, I could have been part of it from the comfort of my own study, and there need not have been all this tension and disappointment.