The good news is the British government’s decision to reintroduce the post-study work visa for foreign students, with Indians amongst the highest numbers. Prime Minister Boris Johnson must be credited for his enlightened common sense, in contrast to his predecessor’s paranoia linking it to immigration. For years, university vice chancellors and captains of industry had deplored such short sightedness. Foreign students contributed not merely fees, but also to the spirit and goals of higher educational institutions. The two-year work visa would enable them to defray part, if not the whole of the expenses incurred at the university. Consider this: Oxbridge heads make regular visits to India to recruit its most promising students. They wouldn’t do so if there no dividends for their institutions.
That said, The Times Education Supplement has listed Oxford University as the world’s best, with Cambridge third, which is a tribute to the high academic standards in the UK. By contrast, India has performed poorly, highlighting the mediocrity of its higher educational institutions. Queues of Indians thus seek admission to the best institutions in the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand – all English-speaking – to better their professional prospects. Those with knowledge of French or German likewise travel to France and Germany.
Results are on the whole positive. Indian Americans are the best qualified per head of population and hold skilled jobs with high incomes. A broadly similar experience has been replicated in the UK. These communities are the most durable bridges with India. Mutual benefit is the name of the game. The currently hard pressed Boris Johnson has kept his eagle on the ball of higher educational exchanges and deserves praise for his efforts. He could easily have passed the buck with anodyne assurances of action, and shelved them for another day when Brexit was done and dusted and its fevers abated.
Bolton bolts, or sacked
The Trump administration lightened its overload of concerns by unloading its National Security Adviser John Bolton. He was its loose cannon: for every season and every crisis his one solution was the big stick and war, or else regime change, wherever and whenever he deemed it necessary. Mr Bolton’s line of vision was limited by his partially sighted view of the national interest. Hence, for Mr Bolton, it was not merely America first, it was America first and last, betwixt and between, no questions asked, none tolerated.
The United States of America in its chequered history has rarely been short of hawks. Culling hawks was tantamount to sacrilege. Thus did the fledgling republic grow and expand in every direction, mostly at the cost weak polities unable or fearful of upsetting the continent’s Leviathan. The United States developed a passion for war judging by the frequency of its formal declarations, its ground invasions over land and sea, to the beat of press tom toms. Speaking softly and using the big stick, as President Theodore Roosevelt recommended, became the staple of American statecraft. So Mr Bolton was not entirely a fish out of water – his is the only country to have used the atom bomb on the helpless Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to save lives and end the Second World War, but to message potential rivals of the peril awaiting violators of Uncle Sam’s diktat.
In the fullness of time the US lost its monopoly of nuclear weapons, delivery systems, chemical and bacteriological agents. Asymmetrical warfare in certain conditions, from Vietnam to Afghanistan - now the longest in American history - is draining the national will and the national exchequer. Imperial overstretch has played a significant role in reducing the country boasting the world’s largest economy to the world’s largest debtor. The $30 trillion debt and rising tells of a mortgaged future since the dollar itself is destined to come under pressure when trading nations turn increasingly to transact in national currencies. The once Republican presidential contender Patrick Buchanan in 2011, wrote: ‘The debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 102 per cent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Index.’ Buchanan again: ‘In the space of a single fiscal year, 2009, debt soared from 41 per cent of the gross domestic product to 53 per cent. This sum, which does not include what the government has borrowed from its own trust funds, is on track to rise to a crushing 85 per cent in the economy by 2018.’ [Patrick J. Buchanan, Death of a Superpower], p 24-25]
Incessant wars are breaking rising numbers of bodies and minds of hapless participants, while intensifying the domestic race war and widening the racial divide. Space weapons and bloated military budgets are a delusional response to cloying insecurity.
In the overall context of the American past, John Bolton is not quite the absurdist mareick the mainstream media make him out to be. His dilemma stemmed from the single string to his bow and its solitary tune. Talking peace, reason and goodwill in between times has been a sedative for nervous disorders.
The fallen John Bolton may soon be seen on television’s Fox News or CNN, with an occasional invitational column in The New York Times or Washington Post, as relief from the tedium of American political discourse and praxis.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign promising to cut back on the country’s military interventions abroad struck a chord with a war weary public and its hopes of enduring peace - pearls cast before the Gadarene swine. For the US deep state permanent peace is an anathema, a betrayal of America’s Manifest Destiny. President Trump started off, confronting countries listed as enemies. His early statements on North Korea were brutal; after a time came the Singapore summit with President Kim, and a disturbingly emollient President, to many of his critics back home. A similar pattern may emerge in US relations with Iran. Such giddy mood swings and ideological roundabouts contributed surely to John Bolton’s crash, from authority to possible oblivion.
However, nothing will have changed fundamentally. Democratic Party voices calling for explorations to international peace have been sidelined by party managers, and hence lack a secure national platform to air their views. The no-changers, Joe Biden, for instance, will be the public face of ‘moderate’ hawks and big buck defence spending, so satisfying the ravenous appetites of the country’s military industrial complex. The manic search for mythical security is guaranteed to continue under the prevailing order, and hence the numberless dark conspiracies and plots of elusive enemies of the state, people and their hallowed way of life.
World body takes up Bengal project
A rural project conceptualised and implemented in the Indian state of West Bengal by the governing Trinamool Congress, led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, will be rolled out across India by the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Eric Falt, UNESCO Director, speaking in New Delhi at a national seminar, described the project called, Rural Craft and Cultural Hubs, as a trail blazer for the rest of India. The project was launched in 2013 by the state government in association with UNESCO generating rural incomes through awareness of local heritage.
‘It is an eye opener and West Bengal has shown the way. This was a pioneer project in India to stop rural migration and market intangible heritage. Following its inception in 2013, we have renewed our involvement here in 2016. Now we shall roll out this model in o0ther states. The second state we have identified is Rajasthan which, too, has a great heritage, said Mr Falt.
West Bengal Commerce and Industries Minister Amit Mitra had
set a targeted revenue of Rs 200 crore from clusters in 15 districts, an increase from the present Rs 100 crore. ‘The project started with only 3000 artisans and now it has 25,000 artisans. I am confident that it will be possible to take that figure to 1 lakh (100,000) in the near future,’ he said. From a monthly income of Rs 500, artisans now earned Rs 7,500. Around 120,000 tourists have visited these hubs – making this a true success story indeed.