happy reading................
TOPIC 1-Oommen
Chandy must resign
More
than two years after it first broke, Kerala’s ‘solar scam’ appears to have come
to a head with a vigilance court in
Thrissur ordering an investigation and the registration of a first information
report against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The immediate reaction of the
Chief Minister was to dismiss demands for his resignation, but this development
has obviously rocked the United Democratic Front government and further chipped away at its legitimacy.
Till this week, Mr. Chandy had remained in the scandal’s penumbra, shrugging off allegations about his personal
involvement after packing off three official aides
soon after they were named as alleged go-betweens in the scam. The case draws
from charges that prime accused Saritha S. Nair and her former partner Biju
Radhakrishnan had duped investors in a
solar power company they had floated. They had allegedly persuaded investors to
put in money by flaunting connections
with the Chief Minister’s office. Police investigators have since estimated the
amount thus swindled to be around Rs.6
crore. Thursday’s court order comes on a petition by an activist after Saritha
Nair deposed before the judicial commission investigating the case that she had
paid a bribe of Rs.1.9 crore to the Chief Minister through an aide. Mr. Chandy
had been questioned for more than 11 hours by the commission a day earlier and
he had claimed innocence, but stopped short of agreeing to a lie detector test.
With an FIR ordered, the issue has now moved beyond questions and answers. For
the legitimacy of the government, in deference
to the post he holds, and in the interest of a fair investigation, Mr. Chandy
must resign forthwith as Chief Minister.
The leak of audio tapes wherein the voice
allegedly of KPCC general secretary Thampanoor Ravi was heard tutoring Saritha Nair over the telephone, asking
her to ‘play safe’ in her testimony to the inquiry commission, has compounded
the case against Mr. Chandy. Significantly, two of his senior Cabinet
colleagues, K.M. Mani and K. Babu, had recently put in their papers as Finance
Minister and Excise Minister, respectively, after adverse court orders in a bar
bribery scam. (The Kerala High Court has since stayed the orders in Mr. Babu’s
case.) There is no space left for Mr. Chandy to try to brazen it out and resist demands for his
resignation without compromising the moral and ethical dignity of the Chief
Minister’s office. It is said in Mr. Chandy’s defence that previous charges of
graft and sexual favours levelled against him by Biju Radhakrishnan before the
same inquiry commission did not hold up against scrutiny.
Nonetheless, Thursday’s order leaves Mr. Chandy no option but to fight his
case legally. By doing so politically, and perhaps by pleading his case to his
party in the run-up to Assembly elections a few months from now, he would risk
drawing Kerala into a constitutional crisis.
VOCABULARY:
1.vigilance :the action or state of keeping careful watch for
possible danger or difficulties.
2. chipped :cut or break (a small piece) from a hard
material.
3. legitimacy : ability to be defended with logic or
justification; validity.
4.shrugging : dismiss something as unimportant.
5.aides : an assistant to an important person, especially
a political leader.
6.duped : deceive; trick.
7.flaunting : display (something) ostentatiously, especially
in order to provoke envy or admiration or to show defiance.
8.swindled : obtain (money) fraudulently.
9.deference : polite submission and respect.
10.tutoring : act as a tutor to (a single pupil or a very
small group).
11. brazen : bold and without shame.
12.scrutiny : critical observation or examination.
TOPIC
2:Mounting grievances, little regulation
The
suspected suicide last week of three women students, who were monetarily
exploited by the management of an ill-equipped private naturopathy and yoga
college in Tamil Nadu, is a dark reminder of the absence of an effective
regulatory or grievance-redress mechanism in the higher education sector.
Similar tragic episodes have played out in other parts of the country as well.
Yet, regulatory authorities have displayed little urgency in trying to rescue
students trapped in vicious environments
that put their families in financial hardship and deprive
them of a meaningful academic life. There is no dearth of regulatory agencies
governing colleges. A private institution can be established only after
multiple clearances — ‘no objection’ and essentiality certificates from the
State governments, approval from apex bodies such as the AICTE and the MCI, and
affiliation from the respective regional universities. What is lacking is
honest and meticulous scrutiny of an institution’s real strengths by
academics, officials and experts vested
with the responsibility of inspecting and certifying colleges. In a context
where colleges have proliferated, regulatory agencies that lack the wherewithal to
physically inspect institutions grant approval mainly based on documents
submitted by them. They undertake only random on-site inspections. Many universities
grant affiliation if a college fulfils even 60 per cent of the stipulated
requirements. Such porous systems are exploited by unscrupulous colleges to
submit fabricated records and obtain approvals. There have been numerous cases
of medical and engineering colleges employing ghost faculty members, or
‘renting’ teachers, laboratory equipment, furniture and books for libraries
during inspections. No concrete steps have been taken to plug the loopholes in the enforcement of regulations. A simple proposal to
assign unique identification numbers to teachers of professional colleges to
prevent duplication in faculty rolls has been pending for years.
In another unhealthy trend in the
pre-approval stage, courts often step in in favour of colleges after regulatory
agencies reject approval or universities refuse to grant affiliation citing
infrastructure and academic deficiencies. This despite the Supreme Court ruling
in AICTE vs. Surinder Kumar Dhawan (2009) that “the courts are neither equipped
nor have the academic or technical background to substitute themselves in place
of statutory professional technical bodies and take decisions in academic
matters involving standards and quality of technical education.” Post-approval,
there is no enabling environment to encourage students to raise grievances relating to over-charging and academic
deprivation. Universities and many State governments have conveniently adopted
a hands-off approach, leaving students in irredeemable
distress. Such a lackadaisical approach
to regulating higher education is equally responsible for colleges producing
unemployable graduates. What is needed is not only the strengthening of
regulatory systems but also the appointment of academicians with uncompromising
integrity to head regulatory bodies and universities.
VOCABULARY:
1.vicious : deliberately cruel or violent.
2. deprive : (of a person) lacking a specified benefit that
is considered important.
3.meticulous : showing great attention to detail; very careful
and precise.
4.scrutiny : critical observation or examination.
5.vested :confer or bestow (power, authority, property,
etc.) on someone.
6.proliferated : increase rapidly in number; multiply.
7.plug : a piece of solid material fitting tightly into a
hole and blocking it up.
8. loopholes : an arrow slit in a wall.
9.grievances : an official statement of a complaint over
something believed to be wrong or unfair.
10.irredeemable : not able to be saved, improved, or corrected.
11.lackadaisical :lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly
lazy.
