Vinod Raina: A Personal Tribute

Feroz Mehdi — 2013-10-02T00:23:07Z

It is very difficult for me to believe that Vinod Raina is no more with us. Rarely I have come across a person with so much energy and drive. Four years ago he knew that he had cancer. In those four years I met him on different occasions in Montreal, Paris, Delhi, Dhaka and Tunis. I never saw him tired or shying away from a task. Never did he complain about his condition. In fact, he shared the fact that he had cancer with a very small number of people.

For the first time in these four years he wrote to me about his illness on 23 August 2013 “Dear Feroz, I am pretty unwell and likely to enter chemo soon. If you feel like you may discreetly inform friends…love, Vinod”. And twenty days later he passed away.

I have known Vinod for over two decades. He came to Montreal many times to participate in activities of our organization Alternatives. Each time he stayed with me. We shared the passion of Indian classical music and cooking. At our place once he spotted a CD cover of a raag (song) he wanted to copy. The box was empty. Very patiently he opened a few hundred boxes I had thinking I must have placed the CD in some other case! But unfortunately we did not find it. The year after when I met him at his house in Bhopal he made me listen to the same raag on his computer! He loved singing poems by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and always carried a book of poems in his bag. He cooked us delicious Kashmiri food. The room where he always stayed in our apartment is called ‘Vinod Chacha ka kamra' (Vinod uncle's room) by our daughter.

After completing his PhD in theoretical physics he became a professor at Delhi University. He resigned from this job and went on to develop the Hoshangabad Science Project in Hoshangabad district in the province of Madhya Pradesh in India. Later he co-founded Eklavya which worked in developing science curriculum in schools. This was the precursor to the National Curriculum Framework of 2005. He started working closely with the all India literacy movement and became the general secretary of the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti.

He was attracted towards the world social forum process from the very beginning in 2001. It was at an Alternatives meeting in Montreal, I clearly remember, a year after, that a dialogue between him and a group of Brazilian activists started about possibilities of moving the forum to India, which finally took place in Mumbai in 2004.

Vinod's work as an educationist and his contribution to the Right to Education bill in India is well known to all. But few know that he wrote the proposal to organize the World Education Forum in Palestine. The forum was officially launched in Ramallah, Palestine with a press conference addressed by him in April 2010.

Vinod was a founding member of our federation Alternatives International. Hundreds of his friends and well wishers are sending their condolence messages through various organizations and networks. Alternatives International will organize an international memorial meeting at the same time as the next IC meeting of the WSF in Morocco.

Vinod passed away on 12 September 2013. His wife and companion Anita Rampal wrote to me “He fought to the last, never giving up, until the last hours when he felt his body was giving up and he then whispered to me saying he wanted to be liberated. I am haunted by those moments with him, but will move out, keeping up my commitment to the same work and ideals we have shared for decades.”

I wish my heartfelt condolences and all the courage to Anita and all his family and friends.

A Good Day For Democracy

Feroz Mehdi — 2013-05-13T17:57:43Z

May 11, 2013 was an important day for Pakistan and a good day for democracy. My five years old daughter will remember this day when she grows up, not only because it is her birth day but also because it was a promising day for the people of her mother's country of birth. General elections were held which saw the first transition between civilian governments in a country since 66 years of its existence.

The Pakistani Taliban party Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had vowed to target the participants of the electoral process specifically those associated with the secular political parties. These included the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). The run up to the elections saw over 130 people killed. On the day of the election itself 30 people died due to bomb blasts. Despite these threats and violence and the fear it caused, over 60 percent of the electorate came out and voted. It was a massive exercise indeed that saw millions of people voting in hundreds of polling stations all across the country.

As the DAWN newspaper's editorial on 12 May noted, “That the Pakistani public has embraced democracy as the way forward despite all manners of threats and assaults on the democratic system is perhaps the single most reassuring development for the democratic project going forward”.

Back in 1999, the government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML(N)), was overthrown by a military coup engineered by the then chief of the Army General Pervez Musharraf. The General ruled till 2008 after which he had to hold elections amidst rising protests. In the electoral campaign that followed, leader of the PPP, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. The General was accused of deliberately not providing security for the deceased leader. The elections were held on February 18, 2008 and brought PPP to power. Musharraf fled to London in a self-imposed exile.

For the first time in the history of Pakistan, the government completed its five year term. As per the rules agreed upon by all participating political parties, an interim government was installed whose task was to organize the elections that were held on May 11, 2013.

Ironically, Pervez Musharraf came back from London, formed a political party and made an application to contest elections. His application was rejected and he was charged with unlawful activities during his dictatorship and confined to house arrest. The man whom he had ousted in the military coup in 1999, Nawaz Sharif and his party PML (N) has won these elections and in days to come will be sworn in as the next Prime Minister of Pakistan.

A relatively new entrant in parliamentary elections the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has made its mark in these elections. Although it got extraordinary coverage during the election campaign, some urban media even predicting the party as a possible coalition partner in the government, it got only 34 seats while PML (N) bagged 126 seats out of a total of 272 seats in the National Assembly. The outgoing PPP managed to win only 33 seats.

Indian and Pakistani politicians bash each other's country, especially during election campaigns, in order to excite their nationalist voters. There was no India bashing during the election campaign in Pakistan and after having won, Nawaz Sharif extended an invitation to the Indian Prime Minister to attend his swearing-in ceremony.