During the second World War, Winston Churchill asked for blood, sweat and tears and in return delivered Victory. Today political parties ask for victory and in return ?? ask for blood, sweat and tears. How do you evaluate the performance of a government which shows such a wide discrepancy between promise and delivery?

We live in a country obsessed by examinations. Politicians who may be temporarily in charge of the education sector take pleasure in inflicting permanent damage on children?s capacity to grow up as well balanced and responsible citizens of the world. How should we react when we hear of a mother being proud that her daughter has obtained 4 A+ after only two terms spent in Standard I? An expert in education rightly calls it ?institutionalised madness?.

Elsewhere, the in-words today are: productivity, payment by results, performance-related appraisal and such other jargon that international financial agencies want employers to brandish to their employees whenever the latter demand better conditions of service or higher salaries to keep pace with inflation.

How do we evaluate productivity and performance? Or quality of life for that matter? By giving grades like A+ or such remarks as ?Must work harder? which teachers use in a student?s report book? The poor teacher will have to manage with a restricted number of qualifying statements such as: poor, fair, satisfactory, good, excellent , or statements which are a bit more descriptive like: ?Room for improvement? and ?Has not done his best?.

In the case of governments it is the public which evaluates their performance irrespective of whether the press is gagged or the government controlled media shower praises on them. If there were an objective mechanism ? like continuous assessment in education ? to monitor and evaluate the performance of governments and of individual ministers, maybe they would stop believing that ?tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles? that their sycophants whisper in their ears.

?Not visible to fools?

We are in the same situation as that emperor who, having delusions of grandeur, wanted his chief courtier to order a dress of such beauty and grace the like of which nobody else had worn before. The courtier agreed but told him that the dress would not be visible to fools. After months of work carried out in great secrecy, the ?dress? was ready. When he was being dressed the emperor could not see any piece of cloth, but refrained from saying so in case he would be called a fool. He left the palace and walked in a procession to show the ?dress? to his subjects. The latter were expressing their utmost admiration for a ?dress? of exceptional quality until one person exclaimed: ?But he has nothing on!? Those who want to hear that they are the new emperors and want the government-controlled media to show to the public the indecent praises of their sycophants beware! The people are not fools.

It would help governments to come up with valid and reliable instruments to enable them to evaluate their performance as the clock starts ticking away. The minister of Education who is so enamoured of competition will be able to oblige with a whole panoply of grades and subgrades to suit the ego of ministers who think so highly of themselves and so poorly of their colleagues ? grades such as A+, A++, A-, A?, extending the whole range of grades that CPE children are lumbered with. He may even produce grades like E- and E- -in order to mask failure as some ministers are very sensitive to criticism.

But it is the public who will award grades. What grade do you think people will give to policies that discourage the culture of savings, which in turn exacerbate the flight of foreign exchange and the devaluation of the rupee? What grade will you give to a policy that imposes taxes on the land that you have sweated to buy and the building that you have built on it at great sacrifice? Or to the policy of bringing back ranking at CPE through the back door? Or to the attempt to rewrite history? Even a student knows that if he invents stories and passes them of as history he will fail his exam.

In terms of descriptive statements, shall we say: Work harder? Room for improvement? Stop dreaming? Or simply ?Lev pake alle??

Surendra BISSOONDOYAL