The
Week In Review
Obamamania
is the New Craze in America
--
PARAMANAND SOOBARAH
This
week all news in America seems to be centred around Senator
Barack Obama. All newspapers, TV bulletins and talk shows
and the blogosphere are about Barack Obama’s foreign trip.
His lightning visits to Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel
and Palestine, and Europe (Germany and France) are accorded
much more importance than President Bush’s visits abroad
ever were. The last visit of Senator John McCain, his
republican rival, to Columbia went almost unnoticed; in fact
it was the liberation of Ingrid Betancour, the high-profile
politician hostage held by the FARC for a number of years,
that occupied prime-time broadcasts and the headlines during
that week.
Poor
Senator McCain is being portrayed as a confused old fool,
who does not quite know what he is saying. He does seem to
have lapses of memory too. This does not mean that the race
is all over – one can never tell who the Americans will
choose, after recent examples of what presidential elections
can produce. But Senator Obama does seem to have a head
start; he seems to be the darling of the media, his campaign
is collecting many more millions of dollars than he can use,
and other circumstances are favouring him. Senator McCain,
on the other hand, was rebuffed by the New York Times
when he wanted them to publish an opinion piece of his.
The
one thing that Senator McCain keeps harping about is how he
was right about the ‘surge’ in Iraq, namely the
temporary increase US military manpower stationed in Iraq to
address the insurgency in that country. He may well be right
on that point, but his plan to keep US troops in Iraq for an
indefinite period is running into trouble. We reported last
week how Prime Minister Al Maliki is welcoming Senator
Obama’s plan to withdraw and redeploy the bulk of US
troops in sixteen months. The success of the surge, it would
seem, has defeated Senator McCain’s plans.
In
spite of all the media hype, Senator Obama had little new to
say in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only thing new were the new
pictures of his in the environments of those countries. All
he had to say had already been said. In Jordan, he was
welcomed very warmly by King Abdullah, who drove him
personally to the airport right up to his plane on the
tarmac in his own car when on his way out to Israel. If
Barack Obama is elected in November, Jordan and America will
hit it off like a roaring fire.
Senator
Obama could do little more than do the usual circuits and
pronounce the usual platitudes about the Palestine question.
The test on the matter will come if and when he is elected
President: will he obtain from Israel that they relinquish
territory seized after the Six-Day War, with perhaps some
minor adjustments for facilitating security arrangements?
In
Germany, where he is as this is being written, Senator Obama
is being received as a superstar. Whatever the political
leaders may think, the German population sees in the
youthful senator another John F. Kennedy: he has the
charisma, the same eloquence, the same vision, and the same
appeal to the population. If the Germans had anything to do
with it, they would have elected him President of America
right away. Senator Obama’s visit to France is not likely
to be less successful.
America:
The economy
The
news on the economic front is very bad. An end to all good
things must come. The lenders tricked millions of people
into borrowing money even when they had no means of paying
it back. They were only interested in their commissions;
once they had secured the business, they would sell the debt
to other unsuspecting parties, including major banks, around
the world. But these loans unraveled like dominoes and banks
lost billions, some of them disappearing altogether.
Two
of the biggest mortgage banks in America, Fanny Mae and
Freddie Mac, are being rescued currently by the government.
These monetary problems come at a time when oil and food
prices are going up. The great automobile company Ford has
announced a loss of more than eight billion dollars, and has
also announced plans to cut back on the production of the
big SUVs so loved by Americans and introduce the smaller
cars it markets in Europe.
America:
The energy question
While
Senator Obama is away, the energy question is now developing
into a major war between the supporters and opponents of
ethanol. Senator Obama is known to support the ethanol
lobby, whereas Senator McCain opposes it. There is a law in
America that requires the oil industry to blend increasing
amounts of ethanol into car fuel. The purpose of the law is
to gradually bring down the amount of carbon dioxide
released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. But at the
same time it encourages the growth of the maize planting,
for in America alcohol is made from maize, better known as
corn in America.
To
sustain the corn growing activity, the state gives away
billions of dollars to farmers as subsidies. In addition to
being turned into breakfast cornflakes, maize is also used
in animal feed; it is for instance the main constituent of
chicken feed. But given the price of oil today, one can make
much more money by turning corn into ethanol than by using
it for food products, human or animal. This is therefore
raising the price of maize-based food and feed, and of all
other food items in its trail.
There
is a strong political movement now to get Congress to
reverse the law about mandating the blending of car fuel
with ethanol, but this does not please those who have
invested, indeed been encouraged to invest, in additional
corn and ethanol production. It is reported that the
Environmental Protection Department has received 15,000
representations on the matter, split roughly even between
for and against lifting the ethanol mandate. A decision will
not be easy.
This
debate must be seen against the background of the current
opposition in America to the importation of ethanol from
Brazil where it is produced much more cheaply from sugar
cane. American farmers do not wish to lose the lucrative
corn-into-ethanol business for they will also lose the
subsidies at the same time. Currently there is a 51 US cents
(approx MUR 15) tax on each gallon of ethanol from Brazil.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke has called for this
tax to be removed. If the US can procure its ethanol from
Brazil, it will be able to meet its environmental objectives
without adversely affecting the price of food.
America:
can solar
energy be harvested in space?
If
all the solar energy that falls on the surface of the earth
could be harvested, we would not know what to do with
energy. In some way, we do collect a lot it, for all the
food we eat is produced by plants which use solar energy, in
addition to water, minerals and carbon dioxide to
manufacture whatever they produce. But our need is for
energy without having to use food to produce it. It is not
impossible to dream up a method that uses solar energy to
raise steam out of water, and to use that for turning
machines including electricity generators. But the more
convenient method in use in recent decades is the solar
cell, which is made of silicon just like computer CPUs. The
price is currently prohibitive, but there is no doubt that
it will go down with time just as computer prices have gone
down. This is the device which I believe Minister Abou
Kasenally has in mind for us all to have on our houses, and
to be selling power to the CEB.
Collecting
solar power on rooftops could be improved substantially if
there were no atmosphere and no clouds to impede the passage
of the sun’s rays, and there was no nighttime during which
there is no sunlight. A former NASA scientist, O. Glenn
Smith, is proposing that we collect solar energy in space,
where the disadvantages of collecting it on the earth’s
surface would not be present, and then transmit it to the
surface by solar technology. This may sound a little like
Jules Verne’s suggestion of sending an expedition to the
moon, but it may become practically feasible some day. I am
mentioning it just to arouse the interest of our young
scientists. The NASA scientist is so convinced of the
feasibility of his suggestion that he is suggesting the use
of the present International Space Station orbiting around
the earth to try it out.
Radovan
Karadzic: The time of reckoning has arrived
Marshal
Tito, who saved Yugoslavia from German, held that
multiracial country together by sheer force of will. Shortly
after his death, the vultures rushed in and broke the county
asunder. The first bit to go was Slovenia – with the
assistance of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Then it was
Croatia. Bosnia-Herzegovina was different for it was home to
three communities, namely the Serbs, the Croats and the
Muslims.
The
Serbs have always harboured some resentment against the
others who were actually there as a result of invasions –
from Germanic tribes in the north and from the Turks in the
south. The people living in those countries will tell you of
how they were ill-treated by their conquerors. But then that
was the accepted way of dealing with vanquished peoples in
those days, a little like the condition of slavery imposed
upon the peoples of Africa. In the modern world, which is by
and large much more civilised, such behaviour cannot be
tolerated. The Americans defeated the Germans in the Second
World War, but also immediately after that gave them the
Marshal Plan. But regrettably certain people want to go back
to the old times, and behave in the cruel ways the people of
those days did.
One
of them was Radovan Karazdic, the Bosnian Serb leader. In
the civil war in his country in the nineties, when he was an
important leader in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he ordered the
massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim civilians in the town of
Srebrenica. He also organised concentration camps to round
up the Croat and Muslim inhabitants of the country in an
attempt at ethnic cleansing, and he laid siege to the town
of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. This was the longest
siege in the history of modern warfare (lasting from April
1992 to February 1996), during which it is estimated that
more than 12,000 people were killed and 50,000 wounded.
Karazdic
was indicted on charges of genocide and has been on the run
for thirteen years. Finally he has been caught and is
expected to face trial at the International Criminal Court
in the Hague.
What
about the genocide in Darfur?
A
well-documented genocide has been going on in western Sudan,
in its Darfur province. Here it is Muslim against Muslim or,
to be more precise, Arab Muslim against Bantu Muslim. It is
sad that the African Union has not been able to do anything
significant to stop this. In fact the committees of African
Presidents set up at various times included more Arab league
members than Sub-Saharan members, and so the decision has
always been in favour of the Sudanese leader, President Omar
al-Bashir. Now the prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court has filed genocide charges against him, accusing him
of masterminding attempts ‘to wipe out African tribes in
Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation.”
The
Arab league has jumped to his defence; the leaders of the
Arab countries have expressed anger at the action of the
prosecutor. This is a matter that we will all watch to see
whether there is one or two kinds of justice where genocide
is concerned.
*
* *
National
Affairs: Honouring Sir Kher
Jagatsingh
The
Prime Minister this week inaugurated a bust of Sir Kher
Jagatsingh in Beau Bassin, the town where he lived. This
came as a great satisfaction to many old-timers; a
reparation for the shabby treatment meted out to this great
man after the 1982 MMM tsunami was long overdue. We must
thank the Prime Minister for his kind words about Sir Kher,
referring as he did to his contribution as Minister of
Health and of Education.
The
greatest contribution of Sir Kher was certainly in the field
of education, for he it was who implemented Sir Seewoosagur
Ramgoolam’s plan of free education to all – from
pre-primary to university. That was not an easy task, but
having been entrusted with this mission by Sir Seewoosagur,
he was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer from those
around him. He drove them hard, and fought down all the
difficulties that they brought up, showing them how they
could be overcome. That was Operations Management, usually
taught to Business Management students for running factories
and other small operations, on a national scale. I cannot
recall any other instance of change on such a scale in such
a short time.
In
addition to just the technicalities of the change, Sir Kher
also brought with him a vision of education that, had it
been continued by those who came after him, would have
provided a system much better able to cope with today’s
needs. In their bid to make everybody a university graduate
in Creole, these successors have given us a system that
leaves 40% of the children, that is to say of the
population, illiterate; among those who are said to be
literate, hardly 2% can speak English or French correctly,
and hardly 10% can write a sentence in clean English, even
though the official results will show that about 20% of the
cohort score a ‘C’ or better. God knows how those C’s
are allocated. Performance
in Science and Mathematics is also less than satisfactory,
and History and Geography do not even seem to be taught.
Sir
Kher had not attended a university, but in his reasoning and
his speaking he put most of his interlocutors to shame. He
also foresaw it might be necessary to issue a Junior
Secondary Education qualification to some of our
compatriots, instead of compelling everybody to continue to
the full School Certificate only to end in failure and
unemployability.
One
aspect of Sir Kher’s contribution that seemed to have
escaped the Prime Minister’s memory – unless I did not
hear him well – was his contribution to village
development. He was for many years Minister of Economic
Planning, and during that period he devoted a lot of effort
and energy at improving the lot of our villagers. Those were
the days when he recruited Shri Kumarsingh Servansingh and
Shri Oomashankar Hawoldar, two of the most motivated and
dedicated civil servants this nation can boast of, as Senior
Village Development Officers. Just the idea of village
development was revolutionary. The famous Development Works
Corporation (DWC) also fell under his Ministry, ably managed
by Mr Michael Leal, and later by Oomashankar Hawoldar
himself; in those very difficult days days the Corporation
ably fulfilled its role of providing part-time employment
– at a time when great professors of economics had
foretold that there was no way Mauritius could be a viable
state economically. In those days also nobody could level
the charges of corruption against the managers. But we know
how bad it became later – to the point of even having to
be wound up.
For
me personally, Sir Kher’s greatest contribution was his
cultural contribution. He was the moving spirit behind
Suchita Ramdin’s records of Bhojpuri folklore and wedding
songs. That is an achievement far greater than any castle or
fortress in concrete. Others have followed but under the
influence of years of cultural drought the result they
produce is such that when they come on the radio you have to
shut it off. It has become fashionable and politically
expedient to pass off sega tunes with a mixture of Creole
and Bhojpuri words as Bhojpuri culture. If only Sir Kher was
alive.
Sir
Kher was a great admirer of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, and
he was later elected to Parliament as member of the Labour
Party, where he also became Secretary-General. But unlike
many in those days, he did not have to prove his loyalty to
SSR by showing off open hostility to the Bissoondoyals.
It
is not possible for me to end this short piece about Sir
Kher without mentioning my own association with him. On
leaving school I joined the government clerical service and
it was there that I met up with him. His rousing talk about
the then awakening movement of the Indo-Mauritian community
following the success of Indian Independence movement, and
about the achievements and worth of Indian leaders and
academics moved me to take a greater interest in Indian
history and culture – of which I already knew a few things
having had the Bissoondoyal brothers as private tutors and
Professor Ram Prakash as teacher at RCC.
We
worked in the same office, the head office of what was then
known as the Medical services, and he would disappear from the office at odd times
of the day, and I would stand in for him. Those short
absences were spent at the office of Mauritius Times where
he would quickly scribble off a short article. In those days
he was writing under the pen name of Titan. It is in memory
of those days that I take pride in being allowed to
co-operate with the paper.
I
am also thankful to him for having drawn my attention to the
need to improve my spoken English and French: every
Indo-Mauritian was, according to him, capable of doing
anything as well if not better than people of other
communities. This may sound a silly statement to make today,
but in those days the community laboured under a feeling of
inferiority, this having been inculcated in us by the other
communities who spoke French, and also English as we then
thought, fluently, whereas we could not get the sounds
always right given our training at home in Bhojpuri or other
ancestral language.
Today
we are confident of being able to teach them both English
and French. For those who may not know this, the French they
speak is described as “exécrable” and “horrible” in
French-speaking Africa. There are a plethora of language
speaking unions around. It is high time we also had a
French-Speaking Union; our role model should be Mr Abdou
Diouf, former President of Senegal and currently
Secretary-General of the “Organisation internationale de
la Francophonie.”
Had
Sir Kher been still around, I am sure that the English
taught in our schools would have been much better. After
fifteen years of linguistic drought at the top, it is no
wonder that that few people can pronounce very elementary
and everyday words correctly. They will tell you that
pronunciation does not matter and it is the message that
counts. If the message is addressed to others who speak like
them, sure that will do. But not in an international
context. It is true that the pronunciation of English at
first sight looks chaotic, unlike French which is largely
phonetic because the same vowel combination always
represents the same sound (the word ‘femme’ is the
exception that proves the rule). But once one gets beyond
the common words (which are of Saxon origin), there is a
great deal of consistency in the spelling-to-pronunciation
equivalence which can be taught systematically in the lower
forms of schools.
In
these days of globalisation there is only one way to
pronounce “development” – be it in Britain, America or
India. If our Minister of Education can read Hindi
characters, I would ask him to look it up in any
English-Hindi dictionary.
Thank
you Bhai Kher for your help and encouragement in the tough
times. We miss you.
Bravo
MBC
For
more than four hours on Thursday 24 July, we were treated to
BBC World, the television programme, with the sound of the
BBC World Service, the radio programme. This shows the
degree of carelessness with which English broadcasts are
treated in the country. Could the entire management and
staff of the station have gone off to sleep for four hours
at a stretch in the afternoon? If they leave attendants to
look after the station during that time, can’t they find
people with a little knowledge of English, our official
language?
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