No man is an island, they say. No one is self-sufficient; everyone relies on others, howsoever powerful one may be. And Donald Trump and the great US is no exception.
In the last 10 days or so there have been massive protests against US President Donald Trump. Never has a US President caused so much controversy in such a short a time. It all started on the day of his inauguration on January 20 with anti-Trump demonstrations, Women’s March and the March for Life by anti-abortion activists. But what took the cake was the protest on his controversial decision – the temporary ban on travel to the US from seven Muslim countries and a temporary ban on refugees – indefinitely, in the case of people from Syria.
According to many state attorney generals the order is unconstitutional, but Trump has stuck to his guns.
It seems the politically novice Trump is a businessman in a hurry. Since assuming office, Trump has not backed down from his campaign rhetoric about withdrawing from trade deals and reconsidering alliances. He has already passed the executive order to build a 1,000-mile-long wall along the Mexican border.
To fulfill all the election promises with such haste and disdain shows his lack of imagination, especially in terms of consequences, and experience of holding a political office. Such a horrendous travel ban decision could have come only from someone who has not understood or learned the ropes of international relationships.
Well, Trump cannot hide under the excuse that he is keeping his word and is only fulfilling his election promises, and that if Americans are unhappy about his decisions, then he should not have been voted to power in the first place.
The US has always prided itself on its democracy and the American values. But some of the decisions taken by Trump in the recent past have tarnished the image of American democracy. Preserving American values will do Trump and the US a power of good.
Prime Minister Theresa May have invited Trump to pay a state visit later this year. That’s her prerogative. More than a million people have signed a petition against Trump’s visit to the UK. But banning Trump is not the solution. Prime Minister May should stick to her plans and hold concrete and constructive dialogue with the US President. People should take a leaf out of Gandhiji’s book. Gandhiji used to hold dialogue even with his worst adversaries, because peaceful solution comes only with talks. Also, if we ban Trump, then we should also ban leaders from Saudi Arabia and China who regularly flout human rights. Trump has said: “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
Well, he may be interested in “America First” but if every country were to follow this protectionist policy, the global economic system will break down.
Trump can achieve his objectives by being bit more patient. He must show some restraint because his ‘religion of rush’ does not augur well for him and the US at large.
Ages ago when India was fighting for its freedom from the Britsh rule, Gandhiji’s weapons of peace and non-violent resistance looked ineffective initially but Indians showed remarkable patience, tolerance and stuck to Gandhiji’s policy, eventually touching the hearts of the British rulers and gaining independence.
Isolation is not a way to deal with problems. By building “a beautiful wall”, Trump is not realising that he is hitting the wall. Hatred, envy and violence do not create a nation or a responsible civic society – a glance at the way India and Pakistan have come up since 1947 is a testimony to that. Needless to say, India with its peaceful and non-violent ways is miles ahead of Pakistan in every walk of life.
The way forward for the world is not isolation but accommodation. In the 1960s the civil rights movement led by Dr Martin Luther King is a very good example of positive change in America, the result of which the Americans and the world saw in a black President (Barack Obama) assuming office in White House in 2008. This happened because of transformation in the mindset of people. Similarly, Nelson Mandela too transformed South Africa with peaceful and non-violent means of protest, paving the way for a multi-racial, democratic government in South Africa.
In a world often hostile to migration, Canada has stood out, welcoming thousands of refugees fleeing war and seeking a haven. Despite Quebec, it has not shut its doors to migrants. Six people were killed in a suspected terror attack at a mosque in Quebec a few days ago.
The main issue in US elections or for that matter in Brexit was immigration. But one should remember that with internet the world has become a global village wherein trade and investment go along with movement of migrants – both skilled and unskilled. No nation howsoever powerful it may be can create walls and still progress further.
Indian IT companies are expected to be hit by the new Bill re-introduced in the US Congress to curb the use of H1-B visas. If the legislation is passed, it will become very difficult for American companies to use H1-B visas to hire foreign workers, including IT professionals from India. But these are early days. Let’s hope sanity will prevail and something better will be worked.
However, Trump has not isolated Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries where there is great intolerance towards people of other faiths. Even after living for 25 years in the Gulf, the foreigners are not given the residential rights. This is unacceptable and counter-productive. One has to accept rough with the smooth.
Ideally Trump should let go the rigid “us versus them” thinking and learn the art of fierce compassion and deconstruct isolation by accommodating the world.
Today the US may be a military superpower, but the novice Trump – with his rash decisions – has certainly stripped the US of its claims to be a “moral superpower”.
Trump’s election slogan was “to make America great again”. By closing its borders, it is unclear how Trump can make America great again, because greatness cannot be in isolation.
Republic Day: State of the Nation
National stock taking at the best of times and at the worst of times is a complex undertaking: India, with its mosaic of cultural and ethnic diversity makes it doubly so. Having defied a multitude of doomsayers, mostly abroad and some at home by lasting the course for seven decades of turbulence and achievement, the Republic materially stands stronger than it has ever been. The pomp and circumstance of the Republic Day celebrations in Delhi particularly made this abundantly clear. The immense multitudes of young and old revelled in the pageantry, the spontaneity of their pride and joy for all to see. For all that the rancorous political and social divisions within the country, the lack of any semblance of magnanimity and mutual understanding manifestly self-evident in the persistent brawling in Parliament have reduced it to an unseemly and expensive circus financed, alas, from the public purse. Politicians as a class stand lower in public esteem than ever was the case when the country was materially weaker in every field of endeavour.
President Pranab Mukherjee who has an outstanding record of public service over many decades and has witnessed the worst of times and the best of times is clearly worried by the trends of party political discourse and public behavior, which appears to have plumbed the depths. He warned intolerant India went against the grain of what Indian civilization had stood for down the ages. Tolerance, with its core values of mutual respect and courtesy represented, and still represents, an inner strength that has no adequate substitute. India was prey to invasion and subjugation when it was most divided. To forget history is to court peril and possible disaster.
The world is in turmoil. Old certainties are giving way to emerging realities across continents. National rivalries have become more incandescent and destructive with the appearance of non-state jihadi terrorism incubated, funded and exported across national borders for political ends. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the most consistent vocal voice against the promotion and use of terror as an instrument of statecraft. President Donald’s unexpected arrival to the White House signals a new turn in American policy on jihadi terrorism, a new determination to wipe it out singly and collectively from the face of the earth. President Trump’s telephone call to Mr Modi affirming the durability of the Indo-US relationship based on a secure platform of shared national interests and political values is a seminal improvement on the Obama years of incessant talk and no action, as former Afghan president Hamid Karzai pointed out bitterly in a recent interview to an Indian newspaper.
The Obama administration’s generous military and financial aid packages to Pakistan and its collaboration with Syrian jihadi groups in a bid to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus tell a dismal tale which the lacquered image of the former US president cannot conceal.
President Trump’s endorsement of Prime Minister Modi’s views on international terrorism was given a uniquely malevolent spin by the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper’s Diplomatic Correspondent Charu Sudan Kasturi, who claimed that the India’s Ministry of External Affairs feared Indian involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. No such sentiment was expressed in the public space by the ministry. Furthermore, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he was, and is, resolutely opposed to American wars in Iraq and Syria, so why should he wish to involve India in those calamitous adventures, you may well ask. American journalism worst practice is clearly rubbing off on some of their Indian counterparts. Fake news, like narcotics, has become an exportable commodity. Time was when facts were sacred and comment was free. Now they are an alchemist’s interchangeable product of fact and fiction.
Republic Day is a time to pause and reflect and stand by ethical speech, written word and public (and private) conduct. India’s future should not, and cannot, be mortgaged to distempered hate and bazaar politics. It must be secured for generations to come. There has never been a better time to stand up and be counted for an enduring India and the light it shone at the best of times.
Education is the key to India’s future
A sound education allied to social discipline is surely the key to India’s future development. More so, when so many educational institutions have been reduced to battle grounds for political parties and their semi-educated leaders. They jostle for control of young minds. It was therefore a cause for deep satisfaction that the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) awarded Kolkata’s St Xavier’s College a deserved an A+++ Two other colleges – Cottons College, Guwahati, and St Joseph’s College, Kozhikode – also achieved the same rating since the introduction of new graduation system in July 2016, but with a CGPA score of 3.77, to its rivals’ 3.76, St Xavier’s nosed ahead to top the table. Kirori Mal, Sri Ram and Hindu Colleges of Delhi occupied places after the top three.
‘It is huge achievement since only a handful of colleges have secured the top-most grade. That all stakeholders – students, teachers, parents, alumni – are very committed went down well with the NAAC. Among other facilities that caught NAAC’s attention were the well-maintained campuses, smart classrooms, semester system, recreational and library facilities. The democratic manner in which the college functions has been appreciated by NAAC,’ said Xavier’s College Principal, Father Felix Raj.
The college has scope for improvement in a number of areas. Explained Father Felicx Raj, ‘According to NAAC, we have the potential to start an academic staff college to train professors and principals. They also advised that research must spread to all courses, including humanities. Faculty members must involve more people in the consultancy,’ he said.
One of the seminal failures of West Bengal’s 34 year-old Left Front government, apart from its inability to stem the flight of capital from the State, was its decimation of education. Academic standards were flouted, cronyism standardized as the governing norm, and excellence derided as bourgeois. Ironically, the Communist Soviet Union’s victory in the Second War against Nazi Germany and its emergence as a global Superpower owed much to the excellence of its scientists and engineers, all products of the high standards of the country’s educational system. In Bengal, the ill-educated comrades of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its Left Front allies upheld ignorance as class virtue and condemned knowledge as class betrayal. The State was reduced to material and intellectual impoverishment.
The context of revival must be put in its proper place if the present situation with its contradictory cross-currents is to be fully understood. In the larger national sphere there are outstanding centres of excellence in science, engineering and management studies, but not nearly enough to meet the requirements of India’s burgeoning economy. Encouragement may be drawn from the Central government’s awareness of the skills shortage and its plans to bridge this shortfall. The partnering of Industry in this remedial process is a cause for hope. More education, better education must be the guiding vision across India.
