Reservation: Harmful for nation
A few years ago I was working in Indonesia as a USAID Consultant to the Ministry of Health. As a part of my work I had to take a group of Doctors on field trips to teach them Task Analysis a technique we introduced to bring more professionalism in the management of health services in Indonesia. Whenever I asked the team to choose a Health Center for filed work, they would talk among themselves and in five minutes time come up with their proposal and it was always unanimous. I was amazed at the team work and remarked about the same with appreciation to the participants who were Doctors. One of the lady Doctors narrated me the following in response to my complements. I reconstruct this from my memory:
“Professor Rao, I agree that we in Indonesia work like a team. We care for each other and respect each other. There is a lot of sharing that takes place. I also agree that it should strike you as an important part of our culture as I believe that your country which taught us a lot at one time has this one aspect very much lacking in them. I am sorry to say this as I had only one experience which I like to narrate”.
She continued... “Professor, A few months ago I was attending a meeting of UNFPA in Bangkok and it was attended by participants from various countries. Each country had two or more delegates. We had delegated from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Philippines, Japan and India etc. One thing I noticed was, whenever a Pakistani spoke something about his country his colleague supported it. Whenever a Bangladeshi spoke about his country his colleague from another department supported it. Whether it is a Sri Lankan or, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi or Malaysian, or a Singaporean, they supported each other in their presentations. However whenever an Indian spoke the second or third Indian contradicted him and said what my colleague said is true in his state (Tamil Nadu) as he comes from Tamil Nadu but the situation is different in my state (UP) as I come from UP and the third person gave a third story. The convention was filled with contradictions by Indians. Surprisingly the contradictions extended even to fights. We found that by the fourth day the Indian delegates were even staying at different places and coming at different times to the conference. So I understand that in your country team work is difficult as every Indian seem to differentiate themselves a lot more than integrate unlike other countries. We are an integrating nation and we help each other”
This episode left strong impressions in my mind about how much a divided nation we are. I am deeply pained to see that we are not learning lessons from our own past and from others and are pursuing policies that divide the nation more than integrate the same. Our representatives whom we elected seem to play this game very well, keep us divided for their statistics of votes, get us to fight and keep managing their show.
Reservations in Higher education at the cost of merit are divisive and wrongly Timed
Our country is on fast growth curve. Just when it was being noticed by every one for its potential, our politicians seem to put the country backward. The most disturbing thing is their insensitivity to listen to people’s voices and continued adamancy to pursue their lop sided policies.
We are a divided nation. Our minds are divisive as we are taught from birth to view each other in terms of the caste, and sub caste or gothra, community, religious affiliation, language, regional affiliation, etc. various variables. Because we are taught from the early child hood to view each other in terms of these variables our self concept and behavior towards each other is determined by the classification we hold of each other. When we judge the other person by virtue of his/her affiliations, we undermine or overestimate the capability of the other person as per the stereotypes we hold. When such stereotypes are shown towards us by others we spend time fighting such stereo types if they are to our disadvantage. When we discover that the other person does not believe in our internal capability and is attributing to us competencies by virtue of his stereotypes he holds about us and not by virtue of our real capabilities, it hurts and we engage ourselves to prove what we really are capable. The result is always fights and fights to prove or disprove. As a result a lot of psychological energies are spent on proving and disproving. These results in enormous energies wasted in unproductive transactions.
The amount of wastage of Nation’s time in inter-state time wasted in water disputes, communal riots and their aftermath, caste wars are all drags on the nation. It affects economic development. Our policy makers should be sensitive to this and should engage the nation in more productive issues than in such transactional issues. They should aim building integrative minds rather than perpetuating the divisiveness in our country. What we need today is an integrative mind for nation building and not those who are dividing the nation further. People and politicians and policy makers who are capable of working towards projecting an integrated India and Indians as one is the need of the hour.
In India certain sections were and perhaps continue to be backward by virtue of the community in which they were born. This was the story a few decades ago. Not any more. I come from a village in Andhra which was dominated by upper caste community. Recently when I visited my village the President was from SC and I had to go to meet him to get a certificate of succession after my mother’s death. It was very pleasing to see the same village being managed by SC community who otherwise stayed outside the village. This is what reservations have done in the last few decades and there has been an appreciable growth. I also noticed that many from the so called forward communities are at the same level at the OBCs economically.
Reservations are not in the Interests of the OBCs themselves as it undermines their merit
When I was PGP chairman at IIMA in mid eighties, we were admitting a number of candidates on reservation as per the Govt. directive. We were lowering the admission standard to fill the reservation quota to a point but not beyond a point. Even then we discovered across the years that while some of the candidates admitted through quota made a mark like others, a few of them would not pass the minimum standards and either have to repeat or even drop out. IIMA did not want to change the standards of the graduating students. Just as you don’t want to have substandard Doctors put into the community by lowering the graduating standards. This used to put the reserved category candidate into a double disadvantage. First we admitted the student in reserved category, branded him and whenever he did not make it to “pass” we showed concern and in all these discussion branding the candidate has been a torture for the candidate on the campus. In addition it is a double torture to admit a candidate at a lower cut off and expect him to perform like others. When he did not make it, raising issues like “the reserved candidates are of poor quality”, etc. perpetuate the myth on the capabilities of the candidates. This used to happen with an extremely few cases but all the reserved candidates would get branded into one category though most of them are as meritorious as any one else. This used to do damage to the good ones as well as the not so good ones because of admission under reserved category. In my view this is a wrong way of supporting a deprived candidate. You may have given the persona seat by reserving the same for him but you have made his life miserable by continuously reminding him that he is there because of reservation and keep debating if further concessions should be given in relaxing the standards etc. This is certainly against any human dignity. It makes those who got in through reservation unhappy and those who could not get in unhappy. Then why further divide the country.
Affirmative Action is in Providing Primary and Secondary Education to Bring out the Merit in any one who is Socially or Economically backwardIf it costs Rs. 8,000 crores to increase seats in few medical colleges and engineering colleges to accommodate few hundreds of OBC students and the burden has to be passed on to the tax payers the question we ask the government is what are they doing to create merit in the students who belong to OBC. I think merit exists in abundance in any candidate irrespective of the caste or community into which he or she is born. It is the deprivation of opportunity at an early age that determines whether the merit is being rough out or not. Government and all of us should spend our money and effort to provide stimulating environment and education at an early stage so that merit in the candidate can be nurtured. We may pay special attention to those who were born in socially and economically deprived families. To classify any one as OBC just by virtue of the caste is not enough as it promotes merit in less deprived people. Merit can be created y exposing them to right education at primary and secondary levels and not by changing the standards of admission. I don’t understand why does any one need to give this simple reasoning to a HRD Minister or Prime Minister of a country. They don’t need this. It looks that they are working under some other compulsions which seem to outweigh the National Interests.
I am happy the modern youth is fighting and arguing for the abolition of the caste system.
It is high time the caste system is abolished from our country and every one is treated with same dignity and every one is given equal opportunity to bring out the merit is him/her. Not only the caste any form of divisiveness by virtue of religion, caste community etc. should be minimized and national Integration needs to be promoted. It is high time that we direct our attention to build integrative minds. The divisive mind set is evident even in the best of the corporation where team work is difficult and Indians are known to be poor team workers. Our policies seem to perpetuate the divisive mind and a lot of time of our nation is being engaged in fighting divisiveness created by our policies.
(The author is Chairman, TVRLS and former professor-IIMA and can be contacted at tvraoad1@sancharnet.in)Source: http://www.greatandhra.com/articles/2006/obc_harm_nation.php
