[Reader-list] Why are we opposed to reservations? Prof Rahul Varman

[Shivam]

Why are we opposed to reservations?

By Prof. Rahul Varman
(IIT Kanpur)
http://www.ambedkar.org/News/News051707.htm


I teach at one of the IITs, and off late my students, colleagues,
friends and relatives have been sending me mails, organising meetings,
writing petitions, initiating e-tirades, etc. against the recent MHRD
announcement and generally taking it for granted that I'll join them
in their protests. Each time they are taken by surprise when I decline
their offer, try to mumble something as to why I do not agree with
them, or sometimes simply keep quiet if I have the advantage of an
impersonal medium like the email. But increasingly it has been hard to
shrug the whole issue away - every time I open my mail box, or as I
walk along the corridor, and even as I bid farewell to my students of
the outgoing batch, the sentiment against reservations seem to be
thick in the air intermixed with the feeling of unease when one does
not make the 'right' noises. And therefore I'll try to articulate at
some length as to why I disagree with the 'anti-reservationists', (the
issue is too complicated for a mere agree/ disagree vote); in spite of
having little sympathy with MHRD and their 'motivated' methods.

Let me begin with an incident which occurred when I had just joined
IITK way back in 1994. We were staying in the guest house then and
some census officials knocked on our door one afternoon to make
enquiries for filling up a questionnaire. On being asked about my
caste my wife expressed her unawareness. When a brief consultation
with each other trying to 'categorise' my surname did not yield any
answer, the main person resolved the issue in an ingenious way. After
confirming that I was a faculty member, he told his associate in quiet
confidence, "likh do, Brahman honge". The point that I want to stress
here is that it is not suddenly that either Mr. Arjun Singh today, or
16 years earlier Mr. B P Mandal, suddenly injected the caste divisions
into our society (or, for that matter, in the elite educational
institutes) as is being alleged by those against the reservations. The
caste divide very much exists everywhere in our society and especially
so in any of these elite institutes; my claim would be borne out by
the names on the doors along the corridors in the faculty corridors or
during the roll call in any of the class rooms. Only thing is that
those who are on the right side of the divide can choose to ignore it.
This will also be borne out by various kinds of statistics if we
bother to look at them.

Some say that instead of caste we should talk about the economic
deprivation and by bringing caste reservations we'll only bring in
more divisiveness. I do not understand this argument; it is like
saying that we should not address the gender oppression as an issue
primarily concerning women, as men also have been sometimes oppressed;
or that racial discrimination is not about the blacks and Hispanics in
the US, as whites also are sometimes on the receiving end. Further, as
if acknowledgement of this form of discrimination(s), instead of being
a logical step towards affirmative action, would actually promote
them. Coming back to reservations in the present context,  it is true
that a lot of men and upper castes are also oppressed, but here we are
talking about a specific systemic historical subjugation of a massive
magnitude, at present perhaps involving more than half a billion
people. Reservations may not be answer to this problem but the issue
cannot be addressed by bringing in every other kind of discrimination
also while attempting to address this issue. Caste problem can be
solved only by addressing caste issues; similarly if there are other
discriminations that exist in the society (and of course they do) they
need to be identified and addressed too, not substituting one form of
redressal for the other. Further if the social and economic equity
spreads it will not harden the caste identity but loosen it as I'll
argue further through the experience of the southern states later.

Of course the most important argument of those protesting is that it
is against the 'merit', that it is going to keep the 'meritorious'
students out and bring in lesser students due to reservations, which
in turn will 'lower' the standards and destroy the excellence of such
institutes, which has been so assiduously and precariously cultivated
as a part of the post colonial nation building project. Now this
argument is at various levels and we can examine various parts of it
one by one.

The first part of the above argument is that reservations will bring
students who lack merit and hence will lower the standards of the
elite institutions; hence they should be kept away from such
reservations. The point is that what does this merit really mean? In
any exam where lakhs appear and only thousands get selected, it is not
that rest are 'bad' but only that there are very limited
opportunities. But does it mean that if we go down in the performance
list of the exams, others are incapable of undergoing the training and
we as an institution are incapable of teaching them in whatever it
takes to make them a good professional? Remember we are talking of
half a billion people when we say 'backwards'. Can't we find handful
out of them who have the 'capability' to undergo the required
training? To me the argument does not sound very different from the
ancient times where by their birth a large number were excluded from
learning Sanskrit or entering the temples. It is very much like
Dronacharya refusing admission to Eklavya. Moreover, we do not seem to
even recognise the odds that the children from disadvantaged face; my
friend who is from  a village 100 kms from Kanpur  tells me that his
village has just one school where hundreds study across classes with
one 18 year old teacher for all the classes put together! And the
point is that, even in this school, dalit children are not even
allowed to drink from the public pot kept for the rest of the
children. In contrast, is it merit when we see that overwhelming
majority of those who clear the JEE and CAT are able to do so, only
after spending huge resources, money and time, as will be borne out
from the newspapers inserts everyday and hoardings at every corner in
vast urban parts of the country? What this shows is the singular lack
of opportunities and the desperation of educated youth to find a berth
in the elite institutions that will catapult them into a different
social and economic orbit. Now the point is that these berths are
being reserved in one way so far, the question is are we ready to
alter that process?

If something sets the elite institutions apart it is the enormous
resources that they attract, both human as well as material. And I do
not see what stops such individuals who enter even after reservations
from becoming good professionals given proper nurturing and resources.
As far as failing of students in such institutes is concerned we'll
find that students of all categories make such a list as the
overwhelming reason for that is either lack of motivation and/ or the
social context and not the lack of ability. Many students after
clearing JEE, CAT, etc. lose the motivation to do well – they stop
going to classes and studying and look for other expressions in life
and simply feel alienated with the academics. The second reason is
that many students simply find it hard to adjust to a westernised –
elite culture of these institutions, especially those who come from
rural or small town background. Since they are not able to find the
right kind of supporting network of friends and peers they are not
able to perform as a lot of learning in such institutions is
collective. Many of the reserved category students have to further
bear the stigma of coming through 'quota', of not being good enough
and hence they get into a shell and are more likely to find themselves
alienated, which finally reflects on their performance. If this is so,
then what is required is more supporting systems within institutions
and not stopping them at the gates.

As a teacher I have also seen cases where within a semester or two
some of the so called 'poor students' are completely transformed. They
have been able to adjust to the requirements of the system and
flourish, may be with the help of a supporting friend, or a patient
teacher, or through an activity where they could express themselves,
or a combination of the above. Moreover if these institutes are not
only abut learning inside the class as we never tire telling the fresh
students, but about becoming a complete professional as so many alumni
will vouch for, and transforming a teenager into a professional who is
in touch with her surroundings, then of course this diversity can do
wonders to the overall learning inside and outside the class rooms. I
have learnt so much from those of my students who are different from
my protected middle class upbringing – a village in eastern UP, a
small town in Bihar, a construction site in Kerala, and so on. Though
I understand nothing about the medical education, but I am sure if a
student can bring his experience of a Chattisgarh village, it can
contribute hugely to the real education in the class.

One can at this point ask a further question, is merit all about
passing exams? After all, are the exams a means or an end? If the
exams are means to look for ability to make better engineers, doctors
and managers, then can there be better methods to look for such
ability? After all in my first engineering class I was told that a
good engineer is the one who can produce the best out of the least
resources and similarly, management is supposed to find one's way in
an uncertain situation – or allocate scarce resources in the most
optimal way possible. If that is so, whatever I have seen of our
deprived masses (of which overwhelming majority belongs to the
backward, dalit castes or adivasis), they have the astonishing
capacity to make something productive from almost next to nothing! For
the last few years I have been studying small industry clusters, like
Moradabad brass, Varanasi silk and Kanpur leather. Put together (all
the clusters in the country), they are exporting more than the IT
sector and their cumulative employment will be several times of the
whole of IT industry. In all these clusters they operate with
miniscule resources – small investment, no electricity, forget about
air-conditioning, non existent roads, lack of water, and little formal
education. These clusters are primarily constituted of these so called
backward/ dalit castes and are truly a tribute to the genius that our
society is. But in spite of centuries of excellence these communities
have hardly produced any formal 'engineers', 'doctors' and 'managers',
and conversely these elite institutions have not developed any
linkages with such industries and their people.

This brings me to a further question, what do 'meritorious' students
from these institutions do when they pass out? I recall what Srilata
Swaminathan, the noted activist, had said at the beginning of her talk
at IIMA in the early 1990s (I at the time was a student there), "I am
told that this is the cream of the country, and what do you do, sell
soaps and toothpastes (ITC, HLL, etc. were the most coveted recruiters
those days)?". There was hushed silence in a room full of students and
faculty. I remember in the mid-90s my sense of disbelief, when I was
the placement coordinator for my department, the HR manager of one of
the big three Indian IT companies told me, "as long as somebody can
recognise a keyboard we take him" in response to my query about what
they sought in a potential employee. Remember this company over the
years has employed thousands of IIT-IIM engineers - managers. As a
child I remember the famous surgeon in my home town, who would first
cut up a patient and then renegotiate the price with the relatives,
before proceeding with the surgery! Or everywhere around me I find
'meritorious' doctors employed in public hospitals, drawing
comfortable salaries and doing roaring private practice! You are not
even required to turn up in the village health centre even once if you
have a rural posting. If the majority of our people usually have to do
with the village quack, they would not mind a 'slightly less
meritorious doctor' coming to take care of them, instead of finding
solace in the fact that super-specialised doctors are ensuring that
the elite of our country have no wrinkles, and such like grave
ailments. I recall when some students from IITK, almost all of them
belonging to the North from UP to MP to Orissa, went to participate in
post Tsunami relief work in Tamil Nadu. After they came back the
overwhelming feeling was this difference from the North that "things
are different over there and they work!" My relatives and
acquaintances prefer to go down south when they are seriously unwell
and not to Delhi or Lucknow. Remember this is the same place which has
implemented the 'quota' much before Mandal and much beyond it too. I
hear of far less caste strife in Tamil Nadu than in UP where caste
based reservations have been implemented for such a long time – it
does not seem to have furthered the caste based identities in South
into a full fledged war like Bihar and UP. Point is 'merit' is not
about stopping somebody at the gates or throwing them out of these
seats of learning, but in creating robust institutions which can
cultivate and nurture the talent with all the complexities of a vast
and disparate society that we are.

Let's put the creamy layer argument also in perspective now. Point is
that such elite education which has so many barriers – expensive and
time consuming coaching, expensive education, elite culture, etc. is
under the present order going to be a preserve only of a select few.
All we are saying is whether it is going to be the preserve of a few
higher castes or some of the other castes can also find an entry. Even
if it is backward IAS's daughter, so be it, finally many others are
also IAS's wards, so how does it make a difference? As has been
rightly said by the critiques, it's a populist measure for the votes.
etc. But so is every single policy of the govt. and so it will be in a
'vote bank democracy' – either for the votes directly, or for
generating resources for the next election. When an Ambani or an Enron
is granted abominable concessions, why don't we come on streets and
say, "it is for money for the next elections."

The difficulty perhaps is that we are only against certain kinds of
reservation. When an Ambani becomes a CEO, when a Gandhi becomes a
minister, we do not say it is against merit, when a professor whose
son is not able to qualify JEE, is still able to send her child abroad
for higher studies, we do not say it is reservation, when only
Valmikis do all the cleaning work at IITK we do not say it is
reservation, the point that we need to ponder is that why is it that
we are only against certain kind of reservation and for certain kind
of merit?

Finally for those of us who think that the present reservation
exercise is ornamental and they would like to do something more basic
and lasting, I recommend a reading of the Mandal report - they will
find that the report goes to some length to capture the socio-economic
indicators in understanding and classifying 'backwards'. Moreover
reservation is a small part of their recommendation which includes
things like special coaching for the disadvantaged to basic issues
like land reforms. The difficulty is that in all these years, only the
naxalite movement seem to have taken up some of the radical
suggestions of the Mandal Commission! Meanwhile I have a question for
those whose problem is the hasty implementation, that "how can we
implement MHRD's recommendations so suddenly?" After all, the report
has been available for debate, discussion, modification and
implementation for all these 16 years! Why is it that we have suddenly
woken up to bother about primary – secondary education as well as the
economic upliftment of the masses, only when the government has
started acting in its own bumbling ways? As far as I know, no academic
body or business institutions like CII has debated these issues and no
committees have been setup to examine the Mandal report all this
while. Finally, history is catching up in its own imperfect ways. We
need to ponder whether these institutions are meant only for supplying
cheap labour for the American corporations. If they have to be more
than that, the time has come for us to be self critical and look
beyond the knee jerk response to the present quagmire.