Anti Quota stir - Join in and support it - Page 18

Now, it seems that the person was not a medical student. 😕

On which channel did you see it Deepak?

The above pic was sent to me by K. Abhi.

The picture was sent by my friend Nilesh Dange

Hey Amogh,

how was the response for the rally in mumbai

ABhi, the response was good but unfortunately I was not able to attend as I had a very important meeting with some IF members, two of those who had come from Banglore.

Where ia ur signature Amogh..... I think u backed out????

The death of meritocracy

May 29, 2006


It was too good to last.

For a little over a decade, it looked really real. At long last, India was getting its act together and was beginning to compete successfully in the global marketplace. The long night of being led by Fabian socialists who were content with the Hindu rate of growth was over. The world was just getting used to the natural business acumen, the intellectual genius, and the creative talents of Indians. Newspapers and business magazines could not refer to China without mentioning India in the same sentence.



Stop the presses. Party's over. Bad news, folks. It's the same old, same old. Just as the world was turning flat, India has decided to retreat into its own spherical bubble of class warfare. The quota raj is over. Long live the quota raj. Plus a change, at least in Bharatvarsha.

There's nothing in the streets looks any different to me
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play. Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray. We don't get fooled again
Don't get fooled again. No, no!

--The Who

We just got fooled again.

In all seriousness, the UPA-Left Coordination Committee's decision to introduce a 27 per cent quota in educational institutions from June 2007 should be viewed as a defining moment in the history of modern India. This is a battle for the very future of India. And the battle is far from over.



While the 'enabling' amendment was passed by Parliament, the actual act of imposing a quota has yet to be passed by Parliament. There is a nation full of young men and women of the Rang De Basanti generation who believe in har desh mahan nahi hota, use mahan banana padta hain (A country can achieve greatness only if its citizens strive to make it great). And there are a few constitutional issues to consider.

The 93rd Constitutional Amendment Bill was expressly passed to roll back the Inamdar ruling of the Supreme Court, which had prohibited state-imposed quotas on unaided educational institutions. Meanwhile, Article 46 of the Indian Constitution requires the promotion of educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other weaker sections.

Arjun Singh and the UPA Government's claim is that Article 46 in conjunction with the 93rd Amendment Bill requires the government to set quotas on educational institutions for OBCs. Retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Khare has suggested in his comments that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide the validity of this amendment.

Another issue to consider is that the government has chosen to interpret the phrase 'weaker sections' and the term 'classes' to mean the same as 'caste'.


Constitutional experts may have an explanation for this, but Indian citizens should be asking the question as to why 'classes' become the same as 'castes', especially considering that the 2001 Census did not even enumerate any caste other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which are specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

Defenders of the OBC quota use a variety of arguments to justify them. A fellow IIT alumnus feels that the 'lower classes -- economic as well as thru caste system -- have been deprived for a long time. Society and Government owes them. This will not help better life for everybody as overall prosperity will reduce crimes and other distractions to economic growth.'

It is interesting to note the use of the word 'lower classes' and 'economic as well as thru caste system'. A caste-blind quota system based on economic backwardness would probably be far more in tune with the Constitution and would likely be supported by a much larger segment of the Indian population.

But the idea that society 'owes them' harks back to Ram Jethmalani's speech in Parliament about how 'the present generation, the people of so-called merit must learn that the present society will have to pay for the sins of our ancestors.' It is the reimposition of the quota raj that will slow India's economic growth and ultimately hurt the poor.



Yet another supporter of reservations states that 'if we think we can arrive at a solution to the core issue of denial of opportunity without resorting to reservation, then why have we not done so all these years?'

There is certainly something to be said about giving all applicants an equal opportunity to compete for admission to institutions such as the IITs, IIMs and AIIMS. But the solution for that is not to force quotas at the college level, but instead to improve educational facilities at the primary and secondary school levels.

Of course, that would require Indian politicians to work hard to actually propose and implement something tangible and meaningful. And the vote bank benefits would not come for years, if at all. It should not come as a surprise that the Arjun Singhs and V P Singhs end up choosing the quick fix of mandating quotas at the professional college level.

In the same vein, another IITian has argued that that merit is not solely determined by marks obtained, since many toppers do not do well later in life, and that so-called merit is gained via access to expensive coaching classes such as those in Kota.

On this issue, some IITians have proposed that the IITs, non-profit organisations or the government itself could provide study guides and material to prepare for entrance examinations on the Internet free of cost. If this material is on par with the kind of coaching that the Bansals and the Brilliants (private ecoaching classes that train students for the IIT and medical entrance exams) provide to those who can afford them, the playing field can be leveled for the underprivileged.


Another argument made is that 'quotas are an accepted practice the world over and many NRIs are getting the same benefits especially in the USA.' For one thing, to the extent US universities try to encourage diversity in their incoming classes, the quotas actually work against Indian-American children since they tend to be over-achievers who are rejected because there are too many Asian-Americans who all have to stay within the unspoken quota limits.

In any case, no other country in the world sets quotas for admissions that can reach up to the absurd level of 50 per cent being proposed in India. Even in the US, racial quotas are being challenged in the courts and through the electoral process.

Courts in the US have started outlawing preferences in college admissions and job promotions, and even the fairly benign quota raj in the US is being rolled back, slowly but surely.

One of the most plausible and enticing arguments made in support of quotas by well-meaning intellectuals goes as follows. 'The top 10 per cent aspirants (to the IITs) are on par in their capabilities and the JEE is like an ODI (One Day International cricket game)', therefore, 'there will be no compromise on the standard of students selected' if quotas are enforced.

Thus OBC candidates who are in the top 10 per cent, but not in the currently admitted top 5,444 ranks, would still get a seat in the IITs.



The 'almost as good' argument is probably the most dangerous one being made in support of quotas. This is social engineering at its worst and represents the death of meritocracy in India. Do we want the very best doctors or engineers in the world, or do we want professionals viewed as being the 'almost best'?

Instead of diluting the hard earned reputation of India's top educational institutions, why not set up other colleges and institutions of excellence to admit those ranked from 5,445 to 10,000? This is not a matter of elitism, but instead it is all about building upon the success already achieved.

India was beginning to win precisely because Indians were viewed to be amongst the most talented professionals that any country could produce. Now, while the Chinese are working to make their universities the best in the world, Indian educational institutions will change their mantra to chase the dream of being the 'almost best.'

And the quota proposal is class warfare at its ugliest. In a very insightful column on rediff.com, Francois Gautier asked Are Brahmins the Dalits of today? The answer is an emphatic 'yes', but non-OBCs need not worry, since the sins of this age will surely visit upon the next one.



The reincarnation of Arjun Singh in a coming epoch will demand quotas for non-OBCs, and so the cycle will perpetuate itself. Sort of like the Steinhardt-Turok universe that goes through infinite cycles of expansion and destruction. The sins of the fathers will always visit upon the sons. And Mera Bharat will aspire to be almost, but not quite, Mahan.

Ram Kelkar is an alumnus of IIT Bombay. He is an investment professional at a financial firm in Chicago, IL. The views expressed herein are strictly his personal opinions and they do not represent the official positions of any institution.

Prime Minister, I have a question

May 25, 2006


Is the practice of debate dead in India? There is no dearth of persons able and willing to put forward a point of view, but how many are equally capable of listening to someone with a different perspective?

The vexed question of reservations is just another of those issues where it is impossible to say anything without being misunderstood. (Occasionally by both sides!)


I do, however, have a question to ask of the Prime Minister. Whatever the value of your HRD minister's proposal, Dr Singh, can you honestly claim that your government's suggested solution will not make things worse?

The United Progressive Alliance government has proposed increasing the number of seats by 50 per cent across the board, thus ensuring that the actual number of seats in the general quota does not fall. Speaking as an academic rather than a politician, Mr Prime Minister, are the logistics feasible?

For a start, it means putting an immense strain on everything from libraries to laboratories. These are not luxuries, they are essential tools in modern education. (Even the School of Languages at the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi has a language laboratory, where students learn to pick up nuances by listening to tapes of themselves.)

It is fine to say that you shall add 50 per cent more seats, but have you calculated the additional financial burden. Back of the envelope calculations say this will cost a minimum of Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) over five years. Yet your government, in its hurry to douse the fires, has vowed to implement everything by 2007. How is this feasible?


To be honest, finding the money for physical resources is the lesser problem. (It is possible that Finance Minister Chidambaram could earmark the money raised by privatisation exclusively for investing in higher education -- though I confess that this is unlikely.) The greater problem by far is finding the teachers.

The essence of good education is the personal attention paid by a teacher to his or her students. This was already faltering given the numbers involved in modern universities. It is simply impossible to respond to needs of individual students in a lecture theatre where up to a hundred students are crammed together. (In my time we spoke of lecture 'rooms', today they are lecture 'theatres'!) This, of course, is a worldwide problem, scarcely one isolated to India, and it is not a new dilemma either.

The ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge offered tutorials as a solution, where a teacher could meet small groups -- rarely more than half a dozen -- in slightly more informal settings. These are not to be mistaken for private tuition, but are part of the formal academic process. This healthy system is still used in some Indian colleges, albeit in a fast dwindling number. It will probably fall apart altogether under the pressure of greater numbers, forcing students to fall back on lecture notes and library books.

No matter what happens, the interaction between teacher and student is bound to diminish.

The answer, one would say, is to increase the number of teachers forthwith. That is easy to say but almost impossible to implement. Ask the directors of the Indian Institutes of Technology, and they will testify to the crunch in professors. Simply put, teaching is not a profession that pays as well as others. This stark economic fact gives Indian professors only two alternatives, either to work for the private sector or to go abroad.



Dr Amartya Sen and Professor Jagdish Bhagwati are world-renowned economists but when was the last time they actually taught in an Indian college? They, like the Nobel laureate Dr Hargobind Khurana before them, looked outside India to make a living.

Indian college professors have, historically, been underpaid. I know of teachers who are forced to offer private tuition to school students to eke out their salaries even though they are working for the University of Delhi. (This, of course, leaves them even less time for research, which is the very lifeblood of academics.) How many professors in, say, MIT would find themselves tutoring Class XII or Class XI pupils in maths or physics -- as I have known at least one IIT teacher doing?

Economics apart, Indian teachers lack the resources and even the respect granted to their peers abroad. John Kenneth Galbraith's death on April 29, 2006 made the headlines in print and on television because of his stature as an advisor to presidents. Can you imagine an analogous situation in India, where a prime minister looks beyond the bureaucracy to appoint a professor as an ambassador?

Yet Professor Galbraith was far from unique; American administrations routinely tap the great universities as sources of talent. (Dr Henry Kissinger was teaching in Harvard immediately before he became President Nixon's National Security Advisor.)

Coming back to the point, if the financial and professional rewards (in the form of research facilities and so on) are poor in Indian universities, how do you attract qualified persons to the academic profession? That question was already plaguing vice-chancellors and the deans even in the most renowned institutions -- and that was before the Manmohan Singh ministry saddled them with the task of getting 50 per cent more.



The Union HRD ministry should, of course, have been the nodal agency in finding a solution to this logistics nightmare. But, as noted earlier, Arjun Singh, seemingly more concerned with the caste of the student rather than the quality of the teacher, has become so polarising a figure that any reasoned debate is impossible.

The arguments over reservations have, up to now, revolved around the issue of the quality and the quantity of the students. Dr Manmohan Singh's preferred solution has raised another question -- on the quantity and the quality of the teachers. Are you sure, Mr Prime Minister, that your solution may not be worse than the perceived problem? Confronted by an increasing workload, how many teachers will continue in their jobs, ill-paid and overworked as they are? And as the better teachers look to greener pastures -- or simply retire -- every student, whatever his caste or creed, shall suffer.

I can appreciate, at some level, the call for reservations. But there is no justification at all for diluting the quality of education by a thoughtless increase in seats.