Only 19% schools have access to internet: UNESCO report

 

The teaching workforce has a deficit of over 1 million teachers and the need is likely to grow, given the shortages of teachers in certain education levels and subjects such as early childhood education, special education, physical education, music, arts, and curricular streams of vocational education.

While the gross enrolment ratio (GER) for elementary schools has increased from 81.6 in 2001 to 93.03 in 2018-19 and stands at 102.1 in 2019-2020, overall retention is 74.6 per cent for elementary education and 59.6 per cent for secondary education in 2019-20, states the UNESCO 2021 State of the Education Report for India: No Teachers, No Class.

“Quality of education is the core challenge of the next decade when it comes to improving overall educational standards, retention, transition, and equity in academic achievement. Hence the focus of this decade on teachers and teaching,” read the report, which was launched today.

Since March 2020, schools in India have not been functioning physically. Foundational learning, which is the focus of the early classes, is set to slide even further down from current low levels.

The report added, “The use of technology in education for the purpose of teaching and learning has emerged as important, but this has also exposed a range of issues – lack of devices and Internet bandwidth for a significant proportion of students, lack of preparedness of teachers in the use of technology, and lack of resources in Indian languages.”

According to Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+) data for the 2018-19 school year, a total of 9.4 million teachers were employed across 1.6 million primary and secondary schools (class 1-12) in India. The figures for 2019-20 were nearly 9.7 million and 1.5 million, respectively.

Lack of digital infrastructure and internet connectivity

The overall availability of computing devices (desktops or laptops) in school is 22 per cent for all India, with rural areas seeing much lower provisioning (18 per cent) than urban areas (43 per cent). Access to the internet in schools is 19 per cent all over India – only 14 per cent in rural areas compared to 42 per cent in urban areas.

“In about 15 years, 27 per cent of the current workforce will need to be replaced. The workforce has a deficit of over 1 million teachers (at current student strength), and is likely to need to grow overall given the shortages of teachers in certain education levels and subjects such as early childhood education, special education, physical education, music, arts, and curricular streams of vocational education,” the report said.

Pupil-teacher ratio improved in government schools

The total number of teachers in the system grew by 17 per cent from 8.9 million teachers in 2013-14 to 9.4 million in 2018-19. The overall pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) – reflecting the effort of the state to meet the RTE Act teacher-requirement guidelines – changed from 31:1 in 2013-14 to 26:1 in 2018-19.

In the same period, the proportion of teachers employed in the private sector grew from 21 per cent in 2013-14 to 35 per cent in 2018-19. The proportion of private schools with teacher requirements (as per a PTR of 1:35) has gone down by 10 per cent, while that of government schools decreased by 6 per cent.

Single-teacher schools number is 1,10,971, that is, 7.15 per cent. About 89 per cent of these single-teacher schools are in rural areas. States with a high percentage of single-teacher schools include Arunachal Pradesh (18.22 per cent), Goa (16.08 per cent), Telangana (15.71 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (14.4 per cent), Jharkhand (13.81 per cent), Uttarakhand (13.64 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (13.08 per cent), and Rajasthan (10.08 per cent).

Women make half of the teacher workforce

Half of India’s 9.43 million school teachers are women. State to state variation in the proportion of women teachers in the workforce is considerable.

States and union territories (UTs) where over 70 per cent of teachers are women include several that are ranked high in the Performance Grading Index (PGI). These include Chandigarh (82 per cent), Delhi (74 per cent), Kerala (78 per cent), Punjab (75 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (75 per cent). Other states-UTs with a higher proportion of women teachers are Puducherry (78 per cent) and Goa (80 per cent). Five states have a low proportion of women teachers (40 per cent or less): Assam (39 per cent), Bihar (40 per cent), Jharkhand (39 per cent), Rajasthan (39 per cent) and Tripura (32 per cent).

The data suggests that the teaching cadre is generally young, with over 65 per cent of teachers aged less than 44 years. The median age of school teachers is 38, and the average family size is four.

On average, 86 per cent of schools across the country – 89 per cent of urban schools and 85 per cent of rural schools – are accessible by road. In hilly or mountainous states and union territories, such as in the north-east, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir, the proportion drops to between 59 per cent and 68 per cent.

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

Assam’s Miya community is now threatened with eviction

 

Nazimuddin Siddique writes:The attack on their citizenship has created unprecedented fear among members of the community. Eviction is the latest weapon being used to trap them in a cycle of poverty and hardship.

On September 23, a video trended on social media. In the video, a lungi-clad man holding a stick— later identified as Moinul Haque — is seen to approach some 20 armed police personnel. Over the next few seconds, he is shot at close range. As he falls to the ground, a dozen policemen or so are seen beating and kicking the dying man. The video also showed a civilian, later identified as a government photographer, stomping on the man lying on the ground. This display of medieval barbarism was witnessed during an eviction drive in Darrang district in central Assam.

Miyas are Muslims of East Bengal origin or Asomiya Muslims of Bengali origin. The history of migration of this social group into Assam dates back to the mid-19th century. Migration continued till the first half of the 20th century. The migrants assimilated with Asomiya culture and adopted Asomiya as their identity and language. Their doing so directly contributed to keeping Asomiya as the language spoken by the majority of people in multilingual and heterogeneous Assam.Yet, the post-colonial society of Assam has witnessed large-scale othering and persecution of the Miya community. There can be no better illustration of the result of this process of othering than the killing of Moinul Haque and the desecration of his corpse.

Persecution of Miyas has a long history in Assam. They are regularly vilified as Gedas, “illegal immigrants”, “Bangladeshis”, “doubtful Bangladeshis”, “illegal encroachers”, etc. Many academics from the region label them as illegal immigrants. Using racial slurs against this social group has been widespread. Apart from quotidian dehumanisation inflicted by many in Assam, there have also been multiple killings with attendant impunity of the perpetrators. None of the perpetrators has hitherto been brought to justice for these mass crimes.

The targeting of the community continued in the name of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and through the creation of the infamous detention camps. A special category of people was created in Assam called “doubtful-voters”; citizenship of thousands of Miyas came under a cloud, based on prejudice and stereotypes. Many were forcibly sent to detention camps. The attack on the very citizenship of thousands of Miya people, including the elderly, women and children, has heaped unprecedented fear, melancholy and hardship on the community. In this series of persecution, “eviction” is the government’s new weapon to imprison this community in an unending cycle of poverty and hardship.

Assam has, of late, been witnessing several eviction drives. Most of these evictions are targeting Muslims. The eviction in Darrang has been executed without proper implementation of a rehabilitation plan. People were served notices to vacate their land at midnight, and evictions commenced the very next morning. Many of them did not receive any notice. The mainstream media has not asked appropriate questions to the government. The civil society lacks the moral courage to protest these evictions, though aware that this is a tool being used to leave thousands of people homeless, landless, and jobless. In the locations earmarked as eviction sites, human beings are reduced, in the now-famous characterisation of India’s home minister, to “termites”. The constitutional guarantee of equality for all citizens has been ground to dust. The backdrop of this collective failure of society is the prevailing Hindu-Muslim divide.

Assam has thousands of landless people. Most of them are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). The IDPs are a creation of past instances of violence and natural calamities that include rivers running amok seasonally and riverbank erosion. But successive governments have not gotten round to resolving the issue of landlessness. Many of the landless are labelled as “illegal Bangladeshis”. Many people in eastern Assam think that lower Assam is full of Miyas. The political class leaves no stone unturned to fan prejudice and creates a fertile ground for hatred.

Civil society must, therefore, initiate a dialogue to bridge the inter-community gap and reclaim the truth. The people of upper Assam must be educated that Miyas are not Bangladeshi. This may be done by the civil society perhaps through a bridging project. Under such a project some people from villages of eastern Assam could be invited to spend time in Miya villages of western Assam, thereby building social bridges.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 6, 2021 under the title ‘A bridge to Assam’s other’. The writer is an Assam-based researcher

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

Why India needs a refugee law

 

Sasmit Patra writes: A sustainable refugee policy is a necessary step to intelligently manage population movements and ensure transparency and predictability in our administrative actions.

Every year, millions of people are forced to abandon their homes in search of safer places to rebuild their lives. According to the UN, over 82.4 million people were forced to leave their homes in 2020 and more than 20 million of them are refugees. Over 200,000 of these refugees are currently in India.

Through its history, India has hosted people fleeing war, conflict and persecution many times — Zoroastrians from Iran, Sri Lankans in the 1980s or Afghans during varied waves of displacement, including the current one. The country also has the experience of rehabilitating Partition refugees.

Welcoming refugees lies at the core of India’s secular, spiritual and cultural values. India has taken part in 49 peacekeeping missions, in which more than 195,000 troops and a significant number of police personnel assisted the UN and international NGOs in conflict-ridden lands. The paradox, therefore, of such a welcoming country not having its own homegrown national refugee framework requires a rethink.

Interventions on refugee assistance in India have largely depended on interim policies and administrative decisions. Consequently, while some groups of refugees have benefitted from holistic support and solutions, others have fallen behind. Whatever be the considerations of refugees seeking a sanctuary — economic, demographic, security, or political — India has been adept in managing complications that result from such situations. Yet, we have not codified our interventions in asylum management, so that they can be showcased globally. While we laud our economic progress and achievements in communications, manufacturing, and in the industrial arena, let us not forget our successes in protecting those forced to flee their homes. Such inclusiveness is as much about the rights of these refugees as our obligations.

Over the years, refugees have contributed significantly to India’s economy — as well as culturally. The manufacturing, automotive, retail, hospitality and food industries bear the positive imprints of their endeavours.

A sustainable refugee policy is a necessary step to intelligently manage population movements and ensure transparency and predictability in our administrative actions. Treatment of refugees must receive the same attention that other human rights protection issues receive — this is consistent with the constitutional emphasis on the rule of law. This is also an important national security consideration that cannot be relegated to a bureaucratic exercise as it is currently. A national refugee management law will be in keeping with India’s leadership role in the region and amongst developing nations. The administrative gains from a standardised mechanism for refugee status determination and treatment will be immense.

The legislation will also clarify the roles of different agencies — governmental, judicial, UN — involved in refugee protection and lay down the procedures of coordination amongst them. It would also help avoid friction between the host country and the country of origin. Other states would recognise the move to grant asylum as a peaceful, humanitarian and legal act, and not an arbitrary political gesture. It will also provide a platform for dialogue on sharing responsibility and aid the search for durable solutions to the root causes of a refugee problem.

Some may argue that India continues to take the humanitarian approach to refugees, despite its security concerns and population-related issues. The absence of a national law to govern “refugees” has not created any serious impediment in coping with varied refugee flows. The spirit and content of international conventions on the subject have been respected through executive as well as judicial intervention. The country, therefore, has somehow developed an intuitive or practical balance between human rights and humanitarian obligations on the one hand and security and national interest on the other.

A refugee law can further clarify this discrepancy. Even though the courts have upheld certain rights of refugees, there needs to be greater clarity about the protection they are entitled to. The time has, therefore, come for a national law specifying the rights and obligations of refugees and the state, and the procedure to be followed while handling refugees in India.

Some may also argue that though India would like to welcome refugees, we might not always afford to do so. Historically, however, accepting refugees has not been about costs but opportunities. Had India not welcomed former refugees, many of whom are thriving businesspersons today, the nation might have lost out. Welcoming refugees generally implies an initial investment of public funds. Once refugees start working, this investment may harvest dividends. Refugees can fill gaps in the labour market or start trades that create wealth and help improve international trade and investment. Thanks to their diverse experiences, refugees bring new concepts, technologies and innovative ideas. But their ability to contribute to the economy is also contingent on policies, laws and institutions of the host country. Some countries provide initial help to refugees, after which they are expected to fend for themselves. A few countries have treated refugees like charity cases. Finding the right balance between the two is what a national refugee law can help achieve.

The law should differentiate between various categories of refugees and migrants and assign each a relevant form of protection — it should anticipate secondary movements and protect the most vulnerable. Progressive states and economic powerhouses like India, with traditional experience and values, can serve as catalysts for global humanitarian action and asylum management. The current global refugee and economic crises present an opportunity for India to better calibrate its asylum management by enacting a national refugee law.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 6, 2021 under the title ‘The case for a refugee law’. The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP from the BJD

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

NIRF ranking does not give full picture of higher education in India

 

S S Mantha, Ashok Thakur writes: It is based on limited parameters and seems to be committing the same sin that the global rankings systems were once accused of — a one-size-fits-all approach.

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of universities and colleges for the year 2021 was released on September 9 by the Ministry of Education (MoE). There has been a big upset with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) being dislodged by IIT Madras as the top institute in the country. Apart from this, the rest seemed business as usual. How seriously should we take this annual educational tournoi and how does it compare with the global systems?

The world over, ranking educational institutes is a matter of debate and research. There are at least 20 global ranking agencies that measure quality on various parameters. Australia has the Research Performance Index that measures universities’ performance. The Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University maintains European and worldwide rankings of the top 500 universities based on the number and impact of Web of Science-indexed publications per year. The QS World University Rankings have been published annually since 2004. In 2009, QS even launched the QS Asian University Rankings in partnership with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper in South Korea. Times Higher Education (THE), a British publication, and Thomson Reuters have been providing a new set of world university rankings since 2011.

Interestingly, there is also a “Ranking of Rankings”, UniRanks, launched in 2017. It aggregates the results of five global rankings, combining them to form a single rank. It uses THE World University Ranking (22.5 per cent), QS World University Ranking (22.5 per cent), US News Best Global University (22.5 per cent), Academic Ranking of World Universities (22.5 per cent), and Reuters World Top 100 Innovative Universities (10 per cent).

NIRF ranking is based on six parameters — teaching-learning and resources, research and professional practice, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity and perception about the institution. The overall score is computed based on the weightage allotted to each parameter and sub-parameter. Some data is provided by the institutions themselves and the rest is sourced from third-party sites.

The quality of an institution is a function of several inputs and the above indicators alone may not be sufficient. How can we include the skills that an institution/university imparts to its students as one of the important ingredients? Should the financial health and size of the institution not be a criterion? Should the financial benefits that accrue to the stakeholders, especially the students, not be linked to the ranking? Ideally, an objective function must be defined for an institution, with the desired attributes as variables and weightage apportioned to each such attribute that depends on their importance in the overall value pWhereas IISc, with 464 faculty members for 4,000 students, has a faculty ratio of 1:8.6, and receives about Rs 350 crore in central grants, BHU with 2,000 teachers for 32,000 students has a ratio of 1:16 and receives a grant of about Rs 200 crore. In the Union Budget 2021, whereas the government allocation was Rs 7,686 crore to the IITs, the total outlay for all Central Universities was Rs 7,643.26 crore. Some departments in the IITs have even better faculty ratios since they are not bound by the cadre rules applicable to state universities. While state university budgets are ridiculously low, they are all competing on the same quality parameters and are expected to outperform the better-endowed ones. Is it not time to also check the return on investment (ROI), especially when several of our students from elite institutions, educated on public money, don’t even serve within the country? Surely, ROI is an important parameter missed out in the NIRF Rankings.

The diversity in the Indian education system is large. There are fresh as well as old institutions offering degrees/diplomas/certifications. There are also technology vs social sciences institutions, multi-disciplinary vs single discipline, private vs public, research-based, innovation-based, language-based or even special-purpose institutions/universities. The boundary conditions in which they operate are very different. NIRF seems to be committing the same sin that the global rankings systems were once accused of — a one-size-fits-all approach.

Another glaring oversight is the disconnect that exists between the ranking and accreditation. Several universities have earned a NAAC A grade but figure poorly in the ranking system. NIRF must take into consideration the NAAC and NBA scores. Though the government has no role in the business of either ranking or accreditation, the least one can expect from the NBA or NAAC is that their left hand knows what the right hand is doing.

Ranking is a numbers game as after two iterations, institutes become adept at giving the data that maximise scores. Accreditation, on the other hand, is a peer-reviewed process and is often accused of subjectivity. Though both are imperfect, accreditation and Quality Assurance (QA) would probably be the de facto standard in the future, like in the US, as they allow stakeholders to sue the universities if they renege on delivering what they claim. A Bill to introduce such accountability was introduced in 2011 but it never saw the light of day.

Two factors that are absent and differentiate us from the global ranking systems are our lack of international faculty and students and the inadequacy of our research to connect with the industry. International faculty and students will come only if they see a value proposition in our institutions, an indicator of quality. Industry connect will happen only when the research translates into improved or new processes and products. Patents translated to products have value, not patents that are just filed. To make this happen, NIRF has to have top experts not only from the country but also from outside in its core committees.

Our institutions have been falling short on global expectations on both these counts from the beginning. Though, as a consequence, NIRF arrived post-2014 with parameters to assuage our ruffled egos, we must be pragmatic and realise that quality cannot be measured in a silo. Having let go of being compared on a global scale, our universities can choose to be rank insiders or rank outsiders.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 6, 2021 under the title ‘How not to test quality’.
Mantha is former chairman, AICTE and Thakur is former Secretary, MHRD, GoI

Source: Indian Express, 6/10/21

Quote of the Day

 

“To bring anything in to your life, imagine it is already there.”
Richard Bach

“अपने जीवन में कुछ भी लाने के लिए, कल्पना करें कि वह पहले से ही वहां है।”
रिचर्ड बाक़

Is the Internet making us stupid?

 

Without giving us time to think, it shows us multiple options to choose from

The other day, an over-the-top platform suggested for me a Web series called “How to get away with murder”, based on my recent views. I immediately turned to my trusted adviser, the Internet search, to read reviews about the series. As I started to type the title of the series, the search engine immediately gave me a list of choices to select: “how to get pregnant”, “how to get periods immediately”, “how to get COVID-19 vaccination certificate” and so on. I was attracted towards the third choice since I had not got the certificate yet.

After several minutes of searching and clicking on multiple tabs on COVID certificate, hyperlinks on the state’s pandemic control measures, images on statistics about upcoming COVID waves, the mandatory WHO website and several conspiracy theories about COVID, I realised that I had forgotten my primary intention of searching. It was like going through a cavalcade of many tableaux but not able to focus on any one. It’s the same experience that you get on a conducted tour wherein you get a glimpse of everything, but nothing completely about anything.

Has the Internet made us less intelligent? Possible, since it impedes our thinking process. The Internet prompts and suggests many things, but blinds us with its offerings. Even before we think, it shows us multiple options to choose. Often these choices are the popular ones, or the ones selected based on our previous searches. Our previous selections are usually our favourite ones, which makes us follow the trails like rats following Pied Piper. Even if we stick to watching one, the nefarious “auto-play” feature automatically plays the next video even before we recognise. Or the next episode of the Web series plays within a few seconds even before we come out of the trance. As if a master chef is sending us our favourite delicacies one after the other in sequence.

The Artificial Intelligence of video channels, search engines, social media and OTTs do not allow us to think. After a period of time, like a mind master, it decides on what we want and what we have to watch. Political affiliations, communal hatred, regional and religious biases, fan base and racial prejudices are often promulgated through these Artificial Intelligence networks on social media, leading to outrage and polarisation.

The other feature of the Internet which can hinder our intellectual growth is its plethora of information. This is actually a paradox. While the Internet provides a huge repository of information to build our knowledge, I believe that our intellect is becoming restricted to what we can search on our smartphones, at that particular moment. The Internet spoon-feeds the information but do we assimilate all the information? This is similar to seeking the address of a particular place. Previously, we used to find the way through the many roads by creating a map in our brain. Now, the smart-maps have made us geographically challenged. We don’t bother to remember the directions to a particular place anymore. We follow what the app tutors us to do. Now, without the app, many of us feel lost and handicapped.

Knowledge is accumulation of information and, intelligence is using this knowledge effectively. The brain retains the acquired knowledge by the linkage of neuronal pathways, which get stronger by linking different information. The more relatable and more repeated an information is, it gets strongly wired in our brain, making us remember the information and use them at the appropriate moment. But now we hardly task our brain with such challenges, and we are increasingly dependent on technology for even simpler stuff. Remember the days we used to remember the phone numbers of at least 10 of our family members. Now if one can know the phone number of the spouse, it is an achievement. Simple mathematical functions have been removed from our routine, and have been elegantly replaced by the smartphone calculator. How many birthdays of our beloved ones do we remember now? The pleasure we get by looking forward to that day and wishing them at the stroke of 12 is unparalleled. Now we are prompted by the calendar apps and social media reminders, and wishing a friend on a birthday has become mechanical.

How much do we multi-task our brain? People of the older generation would be running multiple to-do things in their brain while performing a task. But now we keep a “to-do” list app, multiple alarms, email reminders, periodic pop-offs, automated pays, and so on for everything, while keeping the brain idling. Writing a nice email or an article is no longer intuitive and thoughtful, but prompted by suggestions by the AI-driven email app. The in-built dictionary “auto-corrects” our mistakes and we hardly give a thought to the grammatical or spelling correction we made. While perfecting the Artificial Intelligence of our smartphones, our intellectual growth remains stunted.

The biggest strength of humans which allowed us to evolve much rapidly than other animals is the brain. It is a supercomputer with an unparalleled ability to take information, assimilate, correlate, retain and express. Of late, the brain’s job has slowly been taken over by the Internet and smartphones. They have become like our external brain — a hard drive with information in hand. The Internet “knows” more about us than what we know about ourselves based on our search history and views on social media. It knows our likes and dislikes and feeds us more of our “likes”, blinkering us to the other side. It does not allow us to reflect, think and act. I am afraid that we are losing our intellect and knowledge to the Internet. In the past two decades, the Internet has given a huge impetus to human communication and technical growth in every sphere of our lives. But like every other technological innovation, we need to realise the pitfalls of the Internet before it makes our brain redundant.

Rishi Kanna

Source: The Hindu, 26/09/21

Understanding the Taliban for what it is

 

While it is undeniable that the Taliban subscribe to an ideology, they are also playing cynical politics

A realistic assessment of the circumstances in which it has to operate should have induced the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to follow a moderate course. Instead, it has sent out unmistakable signs of a preference for extremism. A peculiar state of mind is almost certainly in play, but to ascribe the dissonance solely to this factor would be a mistake.

The Taliban’s obduracy

Afghanistan desperately needs financial assistance from the international community. This is not only because of the looming food crisis, which could push lakhs of people to the brink of starvation within weeks. Donors will probably provide food aid in time. But the government has no money to pay salaries or get the machinery moving.

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Taliban’s message to the world — We haven’t changed

 

Before the U.S. shut shop in mid-August, it is estimated to have taken care of 80% of public expenditure in Afghanistan. Several billion dollars worth of Afghan government funds have now been frozen by the U.S. Federal Reserve. Other donor countries and the International Monetary Fund have also cut off the flow of finance. Russia, Iran and the Central Asian republics cannot pick up the slack; China believes in loans, not grants; and Pakistan is a near basket case. The only source of revenue that the authorities in Kabul can hope to tap is customs payments and a good part of those could be siphoned off by the militias that control border check posts.

Western countries are not likely to recognise the Taliban regime as the legitimate government — a necessary condition for the loosening of purse strings — unless it fulfils three conditions: Kabul will have to ensure that terrorist groups do not find sanctuary in Afghanistan; the rights of women and minorities must be protected; and the government must be inclusive. But judging by the first steps they took after taking over, the Taliban seem untroubled by these demands or the consequences of non-compliance. In forming a cabinet, the Taliban defiantly signalled that they were inclined to lead their country back to the despotism they had imposed during their earlier stint in power. Hardline Pakhtoons control most ministries, other ethnicities have only token representation, and women have been excluded. Indications about how this lot would rule soon followed. The Education Ministry ordered male teachers and students back to secondary school but made no mention of women educators or girl students. Working women were told they must stay at home until proper systems are in place to ensure their safety. There is no longer a Women’s Ministry; the Taliban have brought back the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. They have banned protests that do not have their approval.

Minor concessions on the demand for inclusiveness of non-Pakhtoons are not likely to satisfy the world or the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Ministry formation has added another hindrance to the flow of funds. Many in the cabinet figure in the UN’s sanctions list and the U.S.’s terrorism list. The U.S. may even impose sanctions on other countries who provide aid to this Cabinet.

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A first person account from Kabul

 

Given these apparently insurmountable hurdles, why have the Taliban displayed such obduracy? A sensible course would have been to show compliance, obtain recognition in order to establish diplomatic ties and get the funds flowing. Revival of the hardline could have been postponed until the regime’s position as a legitimate entity had been secured. Other governments would have found the rupturing of ties more difficult than withholding recognition from the outset.

A hotchpotch of militias

The general belief is that the Taliban are fanatically devoted to a pre-modern world view. This narrative is designed to embed in the world’s consciousness the idea that the young Talibs form the core of this enterprise and are such strong believers in whatever they have been taught that they will turn against their political leaders if there is any deviation from the world view and policies they espouse. The story goes that any compromise by the elders or nominal superiors will drive these young Talibs to join the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP).

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It is time to call this bluff. Young Talibs, whether drawn from the villages or the refugee camps, are probably all true Muslims and most might have some respect for their mullahs. But they are not as unexposed to the world as the generation preceding them. According to reports, they have had no inhibitions in posing for photographs or listening to music, activities frowned upon by the strictly conservative. The earlier generation of Talibs might have respected Osama bin Laden for sacrificing a life of luxury to join the jihad. But that did not motivate them to join al Qaeda even though bin Laden made an oath of allegiance to their revered leader, Mullah Omar. After all, there were no Afghans among the 19 militants associated with 9/11. If that was the case in the heyday of jihadism, there seems to be little reason to think that these young men will now drift towards the IS-KP. Are the extremists who have cornered the plum posts in the cabinet likely to make common cause with the IS-KP if they are thwarted from implementing their policies? They do subscribe to an ideology that is a mix of Pakhtoonwali (the old tribal code) and a paternalistic interpretation of the Shariah. Devotion to the cause did not prevent them from diverting aid meant for refugees to investments in the Gulf and luxury housing in Quetta. They are certainly conservative and ruthless. But their proclamation of intent to establish a system based on their own interpretation of selected Islamic texts appears nothing more than cynical politics.

Overall, the impression sought to be created is that the Taliban movement is an extremist-controlled monolith and unstoppable. Actually, the Taliban are a hotchpotch of militias, which are constantly repositioning themselves in relation to one another. Designations such as Defence Minister have little meaning when the army no longer exists, and Mullah Yaqoob has full control only over the men raised from his locality. Other militias co-opted to serve with his men could drift away over time. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has gained possession of the intelligence dossiers in his Interior Ministry, and who has the power to appoint governors, might be the only real winner here. Resistance to his appointment might have been a factor that led Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed to intervene directly in Afghan’s ministry formation. Haqqani’s ascendancy certainly advances Pakistan’s agenda. But the road ahead is fraught in Afghanistan where fault lines run every which way. Pakistan knows that it faces a tough task inside the territory of its western neighbour. Meanwhile, it seems intent on garnering what benefits it can. In prompting its protégés to be intransigent, Pakistan can present itself before the world as the only entity capable of controlling the crazies.

Kesava Menon 

Source: The Hindu, 4/10/21