Literally amnesiac

How does a government so short of good news fail to capitalise on the little that comes its way and which it can use to its advantage? The Indian government’s failure to bring literacy to everyone in 50 years of freedom –China, with which this India likes to compare itself, has almost total literacy — is a colossalpolitical failure that has been endlessly remarked on. But the public-relations failure of this government is something else.

Is it that the HRD ministry is too big to condescend to aim for something as trivial as a little popularity for itself and its government? Or perhaps the BJP’s particular priorities, and particularly those of its HRD minister, are so overwhelming as to divert it from something as elementary as plain literacy?

Poor public relations have hamstrung this government from the outset. The government’s failure to sustain at least some of the euphoria generated by the nuclear tests was proof enough. Granted that a literacy figure of 62 per cent, as opposed to the 52 per cent in the 1991 census, is still nothing to write home about.

All manner of smaller, poorer, undemocratic countries bettered that figure long ago. But it is still a noticeable improvement. In propaganda terms, it would have been a relief to put paid to the cliched description of India as faring worse on literacy thansub-Saharan Africa. For this government, it was fortuitous that the information came in under its regime. It would have seemed logical that it would make political capital from this as politicians do for the accomplishments of earlier, rival, regimes. The BJP itself used to excel at the art of claiming credit even where anything but credit was due. It seems to have lost the political instinct.

The matter goes beyond public relations, of course. That even in a short decade there has been noticeable progress on literacy should focus minds on what governments have done right and which approaches have worked. It is crucial to keep up the morale in an effort which has seemed for so long a losing battle. Much of India’s self-flagellation is patently justified.

But giving the country pride in itself is manifestly a part of the BJP’s and its HRD ministry’s agenda. Here is hoping that the news will concentrate minds on what the ministry’s primary task is and sharpen its reflexes about parting with good news: thebad makes itself known anyway.