Walk Alone

From The Times of India, Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - “Striking AIIMS docs live in a glass house” -

NEW DELHI: The main grouse of AIIMS students - at the forefront of the stir against 27% reservation for OBCs - is that merit is being sacrificed at the altar of votebank politics. But they forget two things: 25% reservation that AIIMS graduates get in PG admission and the Supreme Court judgment of 2001 that declares the earlier system of 33% reservation for them bad in law.

In fact, the SC, while stating that 33% institutional reservation is “unconstitutional”, agreed with the findings of the Delhi High Court, which had earlier set aside the reservation.

The HC had found that “AIIMS students, who had secured as low as 14% or 19% or 22% in the (all-India) entrance examination got admission to PG courses while SC or ST candidates could not secure admission in their 15% or 7% quota in PG courses, in spite of having obtained marks far higher than the in-house candidates of the institute.” HC had analysed admission data over five years.

The apex court also agreed with the HC that the “figure of 33% reservation for in-house candidates was statistically so arrived at as to secure 100% reservation for AIIMS students. There were about 40 AIIMS candidates. The PG seats being 120, 33% thereof worked out to be 40.” That meant all 40 AIIMS graduates were assured of PG seats.

Merit here was clearly being sacrificed, the study showed. For instance, in the January 1996 session, an AIIMS student with 46.167% marks - lowest for an AIIMS student that year - got PG admission.

However, an SC student with the same grades was admitted but denied coveted course such as obstetrics and gynaecology. The SC student got shunted to community while AIIMS students easily won berths in prestigious disciplines.

Twelve AIIMS candidates were selected even though they got less marks than the SC candidate who secured 60.33% marks. Similarly, 16 AIIMS students got admission to PG courses even though they got less marks than another ST student who got 62.16%.

Basing itself on this study, SC said, “Institutional reservation is not supported by the Constitution or constitutional principles.” “A certain degree of preference for students of the same institution intended to prosecute further studies therein is permissible on grounds of convenience, suitability and familiarity with an educational environment,” it added.

Preferences, the court said, had to be “reasonable and not excessive…Minimum standards cannot be so diluted as to become practically non-existent.” In the similar vein, SC said, “It cannot be forgotten that the medical graduates of AIIMS are not ’sons of soil’. They are drawn from all over the country.”

The court reasoned that these students had “no moorings in Delhi. They are neither backward nor weaker sections of society. Their achieving an all-India merit and entry in the premier institution of national importance should not bring in a brooding sense of complacence in them”.

Extending the damning logic, the court said in preserving quotas for its own students, “the zeal for preserving excellence is lost. The students lose craving for learning.”

There are a few comments supporting the inhouse reservations - all I can say is, if AIIMS graduates work for 18 hours a day servicing patients, so do others who appear for the PG courses. Its a requirement in the medical courses. See it online. Looks like the white lab-coats are more than a symbol of anti-reservation - they also hide in-house reservations.

YFE and Kunal Krishna have yet to answer my mails. My arguments are as follows:

1. Don’t hold medical services to ransom.
2. Attack sidelining of merit on all fronts -
   1. Reservations for girls - yes, we have them, inspite of girls beating us boys at every exam.
   2. NRI/management seats - money power, eh?
   3. Local MLA/MP “recommendations”
   4. And now, inhouse reservations
3. If you can, please avoid making it an anti-OBC movement.

Poll results in the Mumbai edition of The Times of India, dated Saturday, May 20, 2006. If polled, my response shall tip in with the ones in bold.

1. Should reservations be extended to OBCs in central educational institutes? Yes - 41% No - 59%
Thats obvious by now. Reservation is not the solution.

2. Will reservations promote social justice? Yes - 41% No - 59%
The opposite, rather. People get more prejudiced. “Reservations se aaya hai, hum open se aaye hain“. Talk of soul corrosion.

3. Is the medical students’ strike justified? Yes - 47% No - 53%
Holding the sick to ransom? BAD idea. Just hope that your loved ones don’t ever get sick during a strike, bandh or a riot.

4. Do SCs, STs and OBCs lack merit? Yes - 39% No - 61%
Face the truth - the upper castes are not genetically engineered super-Aryans. In fact, the lower castes who have survived till now, are the fittest of the oppressed, according to Darwin’s laws, while the upper castes must have degenerated their gene pool because of lack of competition.

5. Are quotas in perpetuity a good idea? Yes - 40% No - 60%
Refer 1 above. Affirmative action is the key.

Also from today’s TOI, “Now, IIT students take to the streets”

We have made it to IIT thanks to the quota but we face discrimination in every walk of life. From insulting names within the IIT campus to being rejected for jobs because of our Dalit status, we are the ignored lot.
- Neil Ratan Shinde, pro-reservation student in IIT Mumbai

I sent the following mail to Kunal Krishna from my college, a rather persistent anti-reservationist.

Are you truly against reservations because they bypass *merit* ? If yes, then what are you (and YFE) doing about NRI and management quotas? Or are you ignoring them because they form a very small percentage of the total seats? See

link to reservations - unequal entry

for more details.

There has been no reply so far.

The conclusions I have drawn so far are

1. The protestors are “youth” who have spare time, money or both.
2. They are just basking in their 15 seconds of fame.

You might say I’m a cloaked pro-reservation guy. But I’m not. People like those in YFE are simply acting in a juvenile fashion. They got the muscle to organise protests, but no brains to know what to protest against. If reservations are like acne on India’s face, then the idea of reducing reservations is like pimple removal cream. What we need is a blood purification program.

1. Is Neil Shinde speaking the truth? If so, what does YFE have to say about it?
2. Can YFE ensure that primary education and social equality is delivered to the oppressed class/caste?
3. Can YFE remove social prejudice? Truly remove it? For real? Can they ask their parents, families, relatives and friends to shed their prejudices? Ask firmly and act even more definitively?
4. Will YFE members stay back and help their country - the one they claimed was “disowning them”? Surely, obligations work both ways.
5. What does YFE think of the fact that over 70-80% of the population comes under the “reserved category”? Surely, something is wrong? Is something wrong in the air Indians breathe? The water that we drink? Or have the upper castes subtly become the face of the country, making the country and the world believe the remaining 30-20% is India?
6. Is YFE going to adopt further issues, or dissolve after the current one is resolved?There are others - social equality, economic parity, corruption (yeah right - rich kids fighting corruption), environment (what does YFE think about asbestos laden ships and the Narmada problem?) and many others.

Guess, there are no answers.

There’s going to be a human chain on Marine Drive on Monday. I would advise you not to participate in it. Couple of reasons. You would be screwing up rush hour traffic on the first day of the week. The other reason is these protestors haven’t thought out things through to the end.

I would reiterate my support for removing reservations and putting in its place, a plan for affirmative action. That being stated, I continue.

What is it about reserved seats that riles up the anti-reservationists? Let me make a few statements.

1. The candidates are not undeserving; they are just less deserving. They have cut-offs too, which are often only marginally lower than the “open” cut-off. This “less” is a relative measure. I have seen candidates from the “open” category who don’t deserve a seat at all. One of them is my project partner right now.
2. After this “unequal entry”, all are treated equally. Look at me. If I don’t work hard on the acdemics (and I don’t) I get bad results. Once you are in, you are treated the same. If you work, you get through to the end. If not, you get stuck. In the end, its only merit and effort that is reflected in the final results.

I’m assuming the protestors have no complaint against the system, once everyone is in and the admission hoopla is over. They will agree that after the admission, it judges everyone impartially. How so ever faulty the methods may be, all agree that its the best possible under the circumstances. So their only complaint is about the unequal entry.

If that is the case, why is no one protesting about the NRI/management seats? These seats hardly come under the merit criteria. Why is not even one of the anti-reservationists (who are using MERIT as their main argument) protesting against these seats being literally sold away? Money power? Or does the lesser magnitude of evil justify condoning the act? After all, its better to befriend a bankrolled kid than an OBC from some unelectrified village 500 miles from the city, right?

And as for the idea of increasing seats, today’s newspapers carried an AICTE notification about some 27,000+ seats being reduced in various courses under its purview, for lack of certified faculty. Now thats a setback for the government.

As a side issue, I have seen many students (and I’m included in this) bemoan the quality of our teaching staff. We attribute it to the teachers coming from government quotas and being unqualified and so on. So, why aren’t the students, holding placards that say “disowned by my nation”, protesting the abandonment of the nation by the earlier guys who passed out? Reasons like low pay, lack of professionalism, etc., don’t absolve them of their crime. Sure we have reservations in the jobs, but what about the unfilled “open” categories? If 50% of the teaching jobs are filled compulsorily by “undeserving and useless” candidates, why are almost all the teachers so damn dry and dull? Why isn’t the “open” 50% of the faculty up to the task? Where are the “talented”, “meritorious” and “deserving” candidates? So much for the “disowned by my nation” thing.

Yes, I have benefited from reservations. Twice. No, I’m not in support of reservations.

Why not? Because its like a drug. You are shot up to the moon when you hold the admission slips in your hand. And for the rest of your life, you have to contend with the question “What if I was in the open category?” It will follow you everywhere. It will attend the course with you. It will be there when you finish the course. It will be there when you start your job. Because, you know, that job has been possible because… Its difficult to be without a clean conscience - how can you figure saying “I believe in meritocracy” when you are where you are by stepping over so many heads? How do you drive away that bitter feeling you get when you know you have driven away your chance to be counted among equals; because all your achievements are based on one act of inequality?

And yet, I find myself coldly unapologetic. If I don’t deserve a seat; well, I have seen others with better academic records who don’t deserve it either. But that is neither here nor there. I’m going to be out of the system soon. And I don’t want it to go to dust by the time my kids (what? OK, your kids - the future of this nation - you get the idea) enter it.

Thite has a plan. In short, reservations are simply to be rejected out of hand. Thats asking the caste people to play fair - simple enough. I’ll repeat my doubt - if you are asking us to come up to your level for judgement, can you guarantee that in a prejudiced society, we will be granted a fair decision? America was once split between whites and blacks during the course of history. Indians still look for shades of brown. If only Eklavya had refused to cut off his thumb, history would have been a bit different.

Please don’t counter this by saying prejudice doesn’t exist now. It does. Look for people asking your caste right after they ask your name. I have gone through that rigmarole - each time my hope that the second question won’t be asked has been dashed. People can’t let go. They want to be assured that they are God’s granted - superior.

Still, I don’t support reservations. Its bad enough for the system. Its also bad for those whom its supposed to work for. How? Other than a corroded soul? Look at any organisation which has reservations. The lower and middle levels will be filled with reserved category candidates. And it will be used in all of the arguments against reservations. Look higher. The top. I doubt you will find a caste guy there. Inspite of reservations, the power centres of our nation have always been with those who have had it traditionally - guess who? The people with a hotline to God. My point is - reservations don’t damn work! If after setting aside 50% of the seats for 50% of the population, not ONE can break (and stay) into a power centre being controlled by someone from the other 50%, then reservation is not the solution, if it ever was; which it wasn’t and still isn’t. I want that stranglehold to be broken. That exclusivity to be removed. I’m game for fair fight. And I’m ready to slug it out if even you add our past records as a liability.

And here’s what I say should be done. And its as utopian as Thite’s plan.

Ambedkar may have been a genius. Ambedkar got respect because he competed and won on equal terms. His mistake was asking to make the battle easier for his caste brothers. Respect can not be earned by reservation. He should have had a bit more trust in his people. If he could make it to the top, what was there to stop the millions from atleast goddamn trying to fight it out on the same terms? One generation is all it takes to grab a hold. If he could do it with his determination alone, what in seven hells made him think that a generation as inspired and determined as the one in the post independence years could not make it? They would have brought around a revolution if he had asked for it - why wouldn’t they try reaching out into the society on equal terms? Simply becuase Ambedkar thought they couldn’t. Benevolent over-protective big brother. And now we believe we can’t either.

Bullshit.

Affirmative action begins and ends with the belief that you can take on the world on its own terms. Stand on your own two feet. If you are ready to fight, I’m ready to lend you the weapons and train you. Thats what the caste people need.

You want your kid to get a good job. For that he needs a good education. Are you ready to forego 10 years of income loss while he studies? Yes? Does your kid want to study and get a good job? Yes? Good. Then we will make sure he clears primary and secondary school on equal terms with others. We will teach him to score - to compete and achieve - on par with others. We will make sure that the education he gets is not just marks on paper. We will teach him that there is education beyond books and schools and institutes. We will make sure he is aware and proud of his identity and yet, is not dependent on it.

Does he want to study more? Is he ready to be among India’s best? Is he aware of the struggles? Does he know the price of failure? Of success? Can he rein in his pride if he succeeds? For there is even more to achieve if he reaches the top. Yes? We will help him out. By now he knows how to compete on equal terms. We will just show him the rules and make sure he understands them well. Money and other mundane things? Surely your son, now among India’s best, can pay us back; or better, use it to bring others, like him, up among India’s best.

That goes for the daughters too.

Did I mention anything about reservations? I think not.

Its a dilemma. Quite like the one in Iqbal. Girish Karnad’s character in the movie, Guruji, keeps saying that the national team needs a batsman. Obviously to bolster his choice of a rich man’s spoilt brat (who knows, maybe that brat was really talented, but thats not the point). And then good old Kapil Dev pops up and says to our hero that the team needs a bowler!

So, the million dollar (and five crore rupees) question is: have the selectors and management of our national team been influenced a bit too much by Iqbal? I am happy that we have taken a 2-0 lead into the series, but look at our top scorers - two a bowler and a newbie! I mean, I don’t know - all I could think of was the dialogue from the movie.

Really, I don’t know what to say…