I read the article below in Hindu and its a wonderful piece in which the author offers a non-partisan support to reservations in IITs and IIMs.
Abhishek Behl
Eviscerating a holy cow
NISHEETH SRIVASTAVA
LET US NOT DELUDE OURSELVES. IIT IS A VERY EFFICIENT AND CONSISTENT BREEDING GROUND FOR PRODUCTIVE MEDIOCRITY
It is very fashionable for the young upper middle class `global' Indian citizen to inveigh against the `sectarian', `populist' and `parochial' policies of the government. The article `Reservation saga' (Open Page, April 23) denouncing 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in the IITs and IIMs falls under this category. It seeks to question the validity of the anti-reservation lobby. As a specific case, we will examine their claims with regard to IIT.
The most feasible approach towards analysing the argument against reservation in IIT is to view the underlying axioms that its proponents cheerfully assume to be unquestionably true.
The most banal of them all is the presumption that the IITs are merit-based `prestigious' `temples of education' that command international respect.
Centres of excellence?
Merit-based? As of JEE 2004, more than 25 per cent entrants to IIT had been enrolled in a coaching institute named FIIT-JEE. The curriculum is based on analysing trends in JEE papers and focusing students' preparation on mindless precision in solving problems to clear the JEE.
The fee for the two-year course is upwards of Rs. 40,000. And FIIT-JEE is but one of myriads of coaching institutes that populate the high-school education system in our cities. Vidyamandir in Delhi, Ramaiah in Hyderabad and Bansal in Kota are household names in the society of JEE aspirants.
All these institutes, with perhaps the honourable exception of Vidyamandir, concentrate on rote-repetition and practice to prepare candidates for the JEE.
Prestigious? Infosys recruits upwards of 50 B. Tech students, from a batch of about 500, to work as software-writing minions at a salary of Rs. 11,000 a month. The IIT system has acquired a reputation for producing `techno-clerks' to create wealth for the burgeoning Indian economy. That's not prestige; it's pragmatism.
Temples of education? Of the 180 credits that a B. Tech student is required to accumulate towards completing his degree, how many do not relate to science and technology? A grand total of twelve — including an instructional course in English. How much flexibility does a B. Tech student possess in deciding his course work? None.
Let us not delude ourselves. IIT is a very efficient and consistent breeding ground for productive mediocrity. It generates graduates with a one-dimensional view of the world and with an intellectual horizon stunted to perform in a particular field of economic activity, viz. technology.
This leads us to the crux of the argument against reservation — there should be no regulations upon excellence. "Why not have reservation in the army? Is education not as important as defence?" goes the plaintive cry. Such an argument would have much merit if we were speaking of actual centres of research that do indeed strive for creative and disciplined endeavour — TIFR, BARC and IISc are the first examples that spring to mind.
But to raise such an argument in favour of the IITs evinces an almost criminal disregard for the ground reality.
Even a cursory perusal of campus culture in the IITs — their cultural hierarchy, their social interactions, their means of recreation, etc., paints a definitive picture of IIT students as self-aggrandising delusional brats living off the fat of the land in the form of subsidies that an indulgent government continues to ritually bestow upon a system that has deviated so far from its founding principles that it betokens those who feel responsible for it to look the other way.
It is instructive to note that the only opposition to the reservation proposal arises from the sections of society that will `suffer' as a consequence — the self-labelled `Forward Class.' Both the faculty and the administration of these markedly autonomous institutes have expressed no views publicly on the matter.
Does this not imply that a concern regarding the dilution of merit as a consequence of the reservation is groundless? Either that or, as is more likely, the faculty at these institutes is too blasé to view any change as making a difference to the commercially guided ethos that prevails.
Suggestion
Thus, the argument against reservation ought to be viewed for what it is — a self-serving, pompous plaint. A parallel could be drawn, without much exaggeration, with the righteous indignation of the French aristocracy at the time of the Revolution. While a caste-based reservation system may be opposed on other principles, the argument that it would dilute the quality of the intellectual product it offers India is flawed because it presupposes that such quality actually exists. This is an extremely narcissistic claim.
(The writer is a student at IIT Madras)
3 comments:
Backwardness, especially from caste discrimination cannotbe resolved without radical land reforms. It is only through land that the dominating castes and classes derive their power. This domination can be effectively punctured only when the dalits and other poorer sections will be landowners and their own cultivators. All forms of affirmative action without land reforms will be no more than a mere refomist intervention. And no one is going to say, "I am sorry for all the ills and wrongs I have done to you and your families for generations, so please do take my land and consider it yours"
Then what do we do???
i agree with kadampa. it is true that reservatiions are only a reformist meassure. but, it is also important that at least reformist measures happen at times when revolution is far ahead.
It is certainly true that reservation for O.B.Cs. will cause a lot of heart-burning to others. But should the mere fact of this heart burning be allowed to operate as a moral veto against social reform. A lot of heart burning was caused to the British when they left India . It burns the hearts of all whites when the black protest against apartheid in South Africa . When the higher castes constituting less than 20 per cent of the country’s population subjected the rest to all manner of social injustice, it must have caused a lot of heart burning to the lower castes. But now that the lower castes are asking for a modest share of the national cake of power and prestige, a chorus of alarm is being raised on the plea that this will cause heart burning to the ruling elite. Of all the spacious arguments advanced against reservation for backward classes, there is none which beats this one about ‘heart burning’ in sheer sophistry.
Report of the Backward Classes Commission, 1980 (Mandal Commission), First Part, Chapter XIII, pages 57 & 58. Government of India 1980.
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