Province India

And Sandhya Jain smells a rat in India’s growing ties with the US. “The UPA is slowly wiring India into the US administration, making it a virtual province, without any public debate over the direction in which the country is being led. As if the 27 per cent OBC quota controversy in higher education was not enough, now American embassy officials have been surreptitiously inveigled into a two-day conference of the University Grants Commission on Challenges Before Higher Education.”

She points out that the UGC is an autonomous institution under the Union ministry of human resource development; its chairman Sukhdeo Thorat was appointed by the present dispensation. Hence, “it seems inconceivable that the diplomats would have been accommodated at the conference without the knowledge of Minister Arjun Singh or the secretary, higher education. Either way, however, this is a scandalous development.”