Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Its about empowerment
Chandrabhan Prasad
With just over 50 MPs, the Left has been virtually blackmailing the
UPA Government. But, how powerful the Dalit/Tribals are with 121 MPs
in the Lok Sabha?
In the popular Dalit perception, most Dalit/Tribal MPs are clay
statues in the Parliament, who can rarely move on their own. How do
the successive Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers been treating the
successive Dalit/Tribal MPs in the realm of governance? Readers can
make their own judgments.
What however, we know is that, rarely the Finance Minister talks to
Dalit/Tribal MPs during the formative months of Budget preparation,
though the Finance Minister makes it a point to meet with various
industrialists and their associations. He even meets with the trade
Union leaders, and associations of agriculturists.
At the hindsight, the 121 Dalit/Tribal MPs don't seem to enjoy the
clout normally associated to the official power-protocol of the
institution of Parliament. This is understandable given positioning of
the community inside society. There is no meaning thus, in despising
the Dalit/Tribal MPs, as barring some Tribal constituencies, most of
them are elected the majority where non-Dalit call the shots. Silence
of Dalit/Tribal MPs is thus, predestined.
But what if the Dalit/Tribals had eleven Billionaires? Can in any
society the political power structure ignore its Billionaires? Can US
for instance, ignore Jews, who constitute a mere two per cent in the
total population of that country? Despite numerically being
insignificant, 45 per cent of all American Billionaires are of Jewish
origin. The Jewish Billionaire Club thus, largely predestines the
American policy on Israel. The money therefore, is not only about
market.
According to the Business Standard Billionaire Club listing (2005),
there are 311 billionaires in India, whose combined worth is at Rs
3.64 trillion. Needless to say, there is no Dalit/Tribal in that
Billionaire Club.
What if there were 11 Dalits/Tribals as Billionaires? Wouldn't they be
more powerful than 121 Dalit/Tribal MPs? In other words, with 11
Billionaires, wouldn't the same 121 MPs become more powerful?
Why do after all, the successive Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers
address functions organised by industry bodies such as CII and FICCI?
Or why do the industry bodies invite Prime Minister or/and Finance
Minister in their public functions when most policy level deals are
clinched in non-official engagements?
If allowed to understand things in abstract, when a Finance Minister
goes to deliver a speech in the CII or FICCI organised function, he in
fact, does so as a performer. If allowed to drag it little farther,
the Finance Minister does exactly what Cine artists do in functions
organised in Dubai. This phenomenon is no India specific. The world
over politics salutes money. There are just three Black Billionaires
in the USA, and the neither State and nor the society can mess with
the larger Black mass.
Dr Ambedkar once wrote that "Men love property more than liberty "
Just one Dalit Billionaire can influence a quarter of the Parliament.
In fact, a Dalit Billionaire can even take a political party on rent
to air the community rights.
In the age of globalisation, Dalits now should redefine the very
notion of power. There can be nothing more powerful thing than the
State power. The State power is regulated by politics. The politics
and the State power are innately interwoven. What we tend to miss is
the fact that, the politics itself can be regulated by Capital. The
Capital and politics thus become as innately interwoven as the
Politics and the State power are. In the end, the power revolves
around the trinity of Capital-Politics-State.
The Dalit/Tribal mass should understand that, without some command
over Capital, their politicians will remain powerless. In fact, this
phenomenon can be at times so vicious that despite a Dalit/Tribal
having become the Prime Minister of the country, the larger
Dalit/Tribal society can still remain powerless. It is in this sense,
a Dalit/Tribal Billionaire Club becomes a critical factor in
empowering the community.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
The English divide
THIRD EYE |Barkha Dutt
June 24, 2006
One of the most awkward — and yet, strangely compelling — things about
journalism is that sometimes, your work makes you hold a mirror to
your own life. This past week, a quiet, but determined, 16-year-old
became an unexpected reflection of my education.
I have always believed that my school and college years were the first
architects of my personality; like every middle-class Indian, I take
pride in where I studied and what I was taught. And yet, the gentle
idealism of this young girl made me pause to wonder: had my public
school education been shamefully elitist?
At first, the story seemed straightforward enough. Garima Godara, a
CBSE topper, with an astonishing 97.6 per cent, had taken the entrance
exam for Delhi Public School, Dwarka, the school closest to her
village. The daughter of a police constable who earned less than Rs
6,000 per month, the school's fees would have been a problem. But the
family was undeterred; perhaps there would be a scholarship or a loan;
surely the school would be keen to admit the girl who had topped the
national capital's merit list. Garima's proud father had spent months
battling the entrenched patriarchy of his peers, fending off nosy
neighbours who gossiped about why she didn't spend enough time in the
kitchen. Now, he was even more determined to give his daughter the
best education her marks could buy.
This could have been the story of New India and its emerging,
self-made middle-class; a proud milestone for a country that dares to
dream.
Instead, here's what happened: DPS turned her down. Her results were
good, it conceded. But marks aren't everything, said the school
principal to NDTV, and besides, her English was poor, and just didn't
cut the grade.
Later, listening to Garima in the studio, it was hard not to feel
both angry and moved. Angry because of the obvious injustice: not only
was she as bright as her results indicated, there was nothing about
her spoken English that suggested that she would have been unable to
keep pace with the syllabus. Yes, she spoke with a regional accent
that some would consider insufficiently sophisticated. But there was
no doubt that she could not only follow a complex argument, she could
also make herself understood to any English speaker.
But it was her calm that was almost heart-breaking; a quiet courage
that belied her teen years. It was almost as if we were more outraged
and indignant than she was. During the course of the programme, a
principal from a well-known school in Dehradun called in, offering her
admission and a scholarship; others promised to get DPS to change its
mind. But betraying only the slightest sense of hurt, she said firmly
that her aim now was to show DPS that she would do better than any of
its students. She had already got herself admitted to another school
and DPS could, quite simply, take a walk.
As she spoke, viewers clearly shared my anger. The online poll showed
that 90 per cent of viewers believed that the English language exerted
a disproportionate influence over the education system.
Yet, were we all being hypocritical and dishonest? This time it was
DPS under the microscope, but were any of us any different?
Let's say, she continued to do outstandingly well in school. The next
stage would be college. I pictured her trying to take the entrance
interview at my old college, Delhi's St. Stephen's. Would she get in?
And even if she made the cut, how would other students react to her
presence? Would they admire her for her academic brilliance? Or would
they snigger at her accent, titter each time she made a grammatical
error and then, melt away, leaving her alone to find her own friends?
Garima's story is a metaphor for India's twisted tryst with the future.
I learnt after the programme was over — and it is significant that
neither she nor her parents brought this up themselves — that she is
an OBC.
For some months now, as the debate over reservation has raged,
opponents of the quotas have made the same point again and again: we
should be a society where merit matters. It's a compelling argument,
and one that I have personally supported.
But what do the anti-quota street fighters have to say now? Here's a
girl who competed in the mainstream, her own DAV pitched against the
trendier, richer, big names. But her merit was swallowed up by
prejudice.
Is it any wonder then that supporters of reservation believe that the
system is stacked against them, and that merit is a con-word used by
upper-caste tricksters?
Her story is also a scathing comment on the class divide in India. It
is fashionable for marketeers and economists to talk about the
burgeoning middle-class. Each day a new figure is conjured up to
demonstrate the size of the Indian market, and the clout of the new
middle-class; is it 250 million this week or has it already reached
300 million? We embrace these statistics, because we like the idea of
India as this century's favourite financial destination. We feel
flattered when Time magazine puts our country on its cover, and we
talk glibly, especially to foreigners, of social mobility and how the
gap between the rich and poor is closing; we argue that India's
tomorrow is being built by its industrious and enterprising
middle-class, and we feel like the future is unfolding, right here and
right now.
But here's what we never admit. We're just the worst sorts of snobs.
The social mobility of the last decade has meant that the new
middle-class does not consist of people like us. Instead, it is made
up of people like Garima, who we still find excuses to exclude; we
sneer at their lack of Westernised sophistication; make fun of their
accents; and we try and ensure that our children have nothing to do
with theirs.
Finally, Garima's story exposes India's paradoxical relationship with
the English language. Nobody in the world speaks English like us. We
have our own idioms, our own words and our own accents.
We pretend to love our own English and brag about how it is India's
great selling point; the reason we dominate the global outsourcing
business. But, of course, deep down we know that our English is not
the English that the West really wants. And so, each time we talk to
Britons or Americans, we subtly alter our diction and inflection. When
we set up our call centres, we drop the subtlety entirely and start
accent classes to teach our young people to abandon the speech
patterns of our own society and to migrate to a virtual, linguistic,
middle America, where they become impersonators of people they will
never meet and never know.
But within India, we still treat our own English as the great social
decider. We laugh at regional accents, smirk at those who make
grammatical errors and feel most at home with those who talk like us.
Everyone else belongs on the other side of the English divide. And as
it turns out, the other side of the class and caste divide as well.
Maybe we cling so tightly to this tiny community because secretly we
are just insecure. Outside of our little bubble, India is changing.
Every major institution in recent times — Parliament, the bureaucracy,
the military, our colleges and schools — is being forced to rewrite
the rules. A new breed of Indians, who no longer look towards the
West for self-affirmation, is making its presence felt. We like to
call this a decline in quality. But actually, it's the rest of India
waiting to get in.
How long are we going to keep the gates shut?
June 24, 2006
One of the most awkward — and yet, strangely compelling — things about
journalism is that sometimes, your work makes you hold a mirror to
your own life. This past week, a quiet, but determined, 16-year-old
became an unexpected reflection of my education.
I have always believed that my school and college years were the first
architects of my personality; like every middle-class Indian, I take
pride in where I studied and what I was taught. And yet, the gentle
idealism of this young girl made me pause to wonder: had my public
school education been shamefully elitist?
At first, the story seemed straightforward enough. Garima Godara, a
CBSE topper, with an astonishing 97.6 per cent, had taken the entrance
exam for Delhi Public School, Dwarka, the school closest to her
village. The daughter of a police constable who earned less than Rs
6,000 per month, the school's fees would have been a problem. But the
family was undeterred; perhaps there would be a scholarship or a loan;
surely the school would be keen to admit the girl who had topped the
national capital's merit list. Garima's proud father had spent months
battling the entrenched patriarchy of his peers, fending off nosy
neighbours who gossiped about why she didn't spend enough time in the
kitchen. Now, he was even more determined to give his daughter the
best education her marks could buy.
This could have been the story of New India and its emerging,
self-made middle-class; a proud milestone for a country that dares to
dream.
Instead, here's what happened: DPS turned her down. Her results were
good, it conceded. But marks aren't everything, said the school
principal to NDTV, and besides, her English was poor, and just didn't
cut the grade.
Later, listening to Garima in the studio, it was hard not to feel
both angry and moved. Angry because of the obvious injustice: not only
was she as bright as her results indicated, there was nothing about
her spoken English that suggested that she would have been unable to
keep pace with the syllabus. Yes, she spoke with a regional accent
that some would consider insufficiently sophisticated. But there was
no doubt that she could not only follow a complex argument, she could
also make herself understood to any English speaker.
But it was her calm that was almost heart-breaking; a quiet courage
that belied her teen years. It was almost as if we were more outraged
and indignant than she was. During the course of the programme, a
principal from a well-known school in Dehradun called in, offering her
admission and a scholarship; others promised to get DPS to change its
mind. But betraying only the slightest sense of hurt, she said firmly
that her aim now was to show DPS that she would do better than any of
its students. She had already got herself admitted to another school
and DPS could, quite simply, take a walk.
As she spoke, viewers clearly shared my anger. The online poll showed
that 90 per cent of viewers believed that the English language exerted
a disproportionate influence over the education system.
Yet, were we all being hypocritical and dishonest? This time it was
DPS under the microscope, but were any of us any different?
Let's say, she continued to do outstandingly well in school. The next
stage would be college. I pictured her trying to take the entrance
interview at my old college, Delhi's St. Stephen's. Would she get in?
And even if she made the cut, how would other students react to her
presence? Would they admire her for her academic brilliance? Or would
they snigger at her accent, titter each time she made a grammatical
error and then, melt away, leaving her alone to find her own friends?
Garima's story is a metaphor for India's twisted tryst with the future.
I learnt after the programme was over — and it is significant that
neither she nor her parents brought this up themselves — that she is
an OBC.
For some months now, as the debate over reservation has raged,
opponents of the quotas have made the same point again and again: we
should be a society where merit matters. It's a compelling argument,
and one that I have personally supported.
But what do the anti-quota street fighters have to say now? Here's a
girl who competed in the mainstream, her own DAV pitched against the
trendier, richer, big names. But her merit was swallowed up by
prejudice.
Is it any wonder then that supporters of reservation believe that the
system is stacked against them, and that merit is a con-word used by
upper-caste tricksters?
Her story is also a scathing comment on the class divide in India. It
is fashionable for marketeers and economists to talk about the
burgeoning middle-class. Each day a new figure is conjured up to
demonstrate the size of the Indian market, and the clout of the new
middle-class; is it 250 million this week or has it already reached
300 million? We embrace these statistics, because we like the idea of
India as this century's favourite financial destination. We feel
flattered when Time magazine puts our country on its cover, and we
talk glibly, especially to foreigners, of social mobility and how the
gap between the rich and poor is closing; we argue that India's
tomorrow is being built by its industrious and enterprising
middle-class, and we feel like the future is unfolding, right here and
right now.
But here's what we never admit. We're just the worst sorts of snobs.
The social mobility of the last decade has meant that the new
middle-class does not consist of people like us. Instead, it is made
up of people like Garima, who we still find excuses to exclude; we
sneer at their lack of Westernised sophistication; make fun of their
accents; and we try and ensure that our children have nothing to do
with theirs.
Finally, Garima's story exposes India's paradoxical relationship with
the English language. Nobody in the world speaks English like us. We
have our own idioms, our own words and our own accents.
We pretend to love our own English and brag about how it is India's
great selling point; the reason we dominate the global outsourcing
business. But, of course, deep down we know that our English is not
the English that the West really wants. And so, each time we talk to
Britons or Americans, we subtly alter our diction and inflection. When
we set up our call centres, we drop the subtlety entirely and start
accent classes to teach our young people to abandon the speech
patterns of our own society and to migrate to a virtual, linguistic,
middle America, where they become impersonators of people they will
never meet and never know.
But within India, we still treat our own English as the great social
decider. We laugh at regional accents, smirk at those who make
grammatical errors and feel most at home with those who talk like us.
Everyone else belongs on the other side of the English divide. And as
it turns out, the other side of the class and caste divide as well.
Maybe we cling so tightly to this tiny community because secretly we
are just insecure. Outside of our little bubble, India is changing.
Every major institution in recent times — Parliament, the bureaucracy,
the military, our colleges and schools — is being forced to rewrite
the rules. A new breed of Indians, who no longer look towards the
West for self-affirmation, is making its presence felt. We like to
call this a decline in quality. But actually, it's the rest of India
waiting to get in.
How long are we going to keep the gates shut?
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Reservations – Some Questions and their Answers
Reservations – Some Questions and their Answers
*
Q: What is reservation?
The word reservation is a misnomer. The appropriate word for it used in the
Indian constitution is Representation. It is not given to anyone in his
individual capacity. It is given to individual as a representative of the
underprivileged community. The beneficiaries of reservations are in turn
expected to help their communities to come up.
Q: Why reservation?
The policy of reservations is being used as a strategy to overcome
discrimination and act as a compensatory exercise. A large section of the
society was historically denied right to property, education, business and
civil rights because of the practice of untouchability. In order to
compensate for the historical denial and have safeguards against
discrimination, we have the reservation policy.
Q: Were Reservations incorporated by the founding fathers of the
constitution only for first 10 years?
Only the political reservations (seats reserved in Loksabha, Vidhansabha,
etc) were to be reserved for 10 years and the policy review was to be made
after that. That is why after every 10 years the parliament extends
political reservations.
The 10 year limit for reservations is not true for the reservations in
education and employment. The reservations in educational institutions and
in employment are never given extension as it is given for the political
reservations.
Q: Why give reservations on basis of caste?
To answer this question we must first understand why the need for the
reservations has arisen. The cause for the various types of disabilities
that the underprivileged castes in India face / have faced, is the systemic
historical subjugation of a massive magnitude based on caste system having a
religious sanction. Therefore if the caste system was the prime cause of all
the disabilities, injustice and inequalities that the Dalit-Bahujans
suffered, then to overcome these disabilities the solution has to be
designed on basis of caste only.
Q: Why not on basis of economic criterion?
Reservations should never be based on economic status for various reasons as
follows:
1. The poverty prevailing among the Dalit-Bahujans has its genesis in the
social-religious deprivations based on caste system. Therefore poverty is an
effect and caste system a cause. The solution should strike at the cause and
not the effect
2. An individual's Economic status can change. Low income may be taken to
mean poverty. But the purchasing value of money, in India, depends upon
caste. For example a Dalit can not buy a cup of tea even in some places.
3. Practical difficulties in proving economic status of individual to the
state machinery are many. The weak may suffer.
4. In caste ridden India infested with rampant corruption, even for an
unchangeable status like caste, the false "Caste Certificate" can be
purchased. How much easier will it be to purchase a false "Income
Certificate"? So income based reservation is impractical. It is no use
arguing when both certificates can be bought, why caste only should form
basis of reservation. It is certainly more difficult to buy a false caste
certificate than a false income certificate.
5. Reservation is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The main
aim is to achieve the active participation and sharing by the "socially
excluded" humanity in all the fields of the affairs of the society. It is
not panacea for all ills, neither it is permanent. It would be a temporary
measure till such time the matrimonial advertisements in newspaper columns
continue to contain the mention of caste.
Q: Should there be a creamy layer criterion or not?
The demand from anti-reservationists for introduction of creamy layer is
ploy to scuttle the whole effectiveness of reservations. Even now out of all
seats meant for SC/STs in IITs , 25-40 % seats remain vacant because it
seems IITs do not find suitable candidates. Just imagine what would happen
if by applying creamy layer criterion the SC/ST middle class, lower middle
class people who are in position to take decent education are excluded from
reservations benefit ! Will the poor among SC/STs be able to compete with
these 'privileged 'students' trained under Ramaiah and at various IIT-JEE
training centers at Kota ?
Of course Not.
This will lead to 100 % seats in IITs for SC/STs going vacant.
Q: How long should the reservations continue?
The answer to this question lies with the anti-reservationists. It depends
on how sincerely and effectively the policy makers which constitute
"privileged castes" people in executive, judiciary and legislature,
implement the reservations policy.
Is it just on part of "privileged castes" people who have enjoyed undeclared
exclusive reservations for past 3000 years and continue to enjoy the same
even in 21st century in all religious institutions and places of worship, to
ask for the timelines for reservations policy?
Why do not they ask, how long the exclusive reservations for particular
community in the religious institutions and places of worship are going to
continue?
The people who have acquired disabilities due to inhuman subjugation for
3000 years will need substantial time to come over those disabilities. 50
years of affirmative action is nothing as compared to 3000 years of
subjugation.
Q: Will not the reservations based on castes lead to divisions in the
society?
There are apprehensions that reservations will lead to the divisions in the
society. These apprehensions are totally irrational. The society is already
divided into different castes. On the contrary reservations will help in
annihilating the caste system. There are around 5000 castes among the SC/ST
and OBCs. By grouping these various castes under 3 broad categories of SC,
ST and OBC, the differences among 5000 separate castes can be abridged. This
is a best way of annihilation of castes. Therefore rather than making
rhetoric about reservations leading to divisions in the society the
anti-reservationists should make honest and sincere efforts to annihilate
castes. Have these people made any efforts towards this direction? In most
of the cases the answer is NO. The people making these anti-reservations
rhetoric, all this time have been enjoying all the privileges that the
Indian caste system offers to the "Privileged Castes". As long as they enjoy
the privileges of the caste system they do not have any qualms regarding it.
But when it comes to making castes as basis for achieving social equality by
providing representations these same people make noises. These are the
double standards of highest order practiced by the 'privileged' people.
Q: Will not reservations affect the Merit?
As regards to how Merit is defined in a very narrow sense and what it
actually means, following is the quote from an article by Prof Rahul Barman
of IIT Kanpur.
"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. "
Reservations of more than 60 % have existed in the 4 states of southern
India and around 40 % in Maharashtra since last 50 years. On other hand in
the north Indian states the 15 % 'privileged castes' have been enjoying 77 %
of the seats in educational institutions and in employment (assuming that 23
% reservations for SC/STs are totally filled, which is not the case). The
World Bank study has found that all the 4 south Indian states are much ahead
of north Indian states in terms of their human development index. It is a
common knowledge that all the southern states and Maharashtra are much ahead
in fields of education, health, industrial development, in implementing
poverty alleviation schemes, etc. than the north Indian states. This shows
that reservations have indeed helped the southern Indian states in making
progress on various fronts. Whereas lack of adequate reservations is
responsible for the lack of development in most of the north Indian states.
Q: Have existing reservations for SC/STs been effective or not?
The reservation policy in the public sector has benefited a lot of people.
The Central government alone has 14 lakh employees. The proportion of
Scheduled castes in class III and IV is well above the quota of 16 per cent
and in class I and II, the proportion is around 8–12 per cent. So, the
middle and the lower middle class that we see today from the Dalit community
is because of reservation. With no reservation, the entry of these people in
government services would have been doubtful.
The situation is similar in education. An article in the EPW (Economic and
Political Weekly) estimates that there are seven lakh SC /ST students in
higher education and about half of them are there because of reservation.
Reservation has certainly helped but there are limitations in any policy
with the way it is implemented.
*
Q: What is reservation?
The word reservation is a misnomer. The appropriate word for it used in the
Indian constitution is Representation. It is not given to anyone in his
individual capacity. It is given to individual as a representative of the
underprivileged community. The beneficiaries of reservations are in turn
expected to help their communities to come up.
Q: Why reservation?
The policy of reservations is being used as a strategy to overcome
discrimination and act as a compensatory exercise. A large section of the
society was historically denied right to property, education, business and
civil rights because of the practice of untouchability. In order to
compensate for the historical denial and have safeguards against
discrimination, we have the reservation policy.
Q: Were Reservations incorporated by the founding fathers of the
constitution only for first 10 years?
Only the political reservations (seats reserved in Loksabha, Vidhansabha,
etc) were to be reserved for 10 years and the policy review was to be made
after that. That is why after every 10 years the parliament extends
political reservations.
The 10 year limit for reservations is not true for the reservations in
education and employment. The reservations in educational institutions and
in employment are never given extension as it is given for the political
reservations.
Q: Why give reservations on basis of caste?
To answer this question we must first understand why the need for the
reservations has arisen. The cause for the various types of disabilities
that the underprivileged castes in India face / have faced, is the systemic
historical subjugation of a massive magnitude based on caste system having a
religious sanction. Therefore if the caste system was the prime cause of all
the disabilities, injustice and inequalities that the Dalit-Bahujans
suffered, then to overcome these disabilities the solution has to be
designed on basis of caste only.
Q: Why not on basis of economic criterion?
Reservations should never be based on economic status for various reasons as
follows:
1. The poverty prevailing among the Dalit-Bahujans has its genesis in the
social-religious deprivations based on caste system. Therefore poverty is an
effect and caste system a cause. The solution should strike at the cause and
not the effect
2. An individual's Economic status can change. Low income may be taken to
mean poverty. But the purchasing value of money, in India, depends upon
caste. For example a Dalit can not buy a cup of tea even in some places.
3. Practical difficulties in proving economic status of individual to the
state machinery are many. The weak may suffer.
4. In caste ridden India infested with rampant corruption, even for an
unchangeable status like caste, the false "Caste Certificate" can be
purchased. How much easier will it be to purchase a false "Income
Certificate"? So income based reservation is impractical. It is no use
arguing when both certificates can be bought, why caste only should form
basis of reservation. It is certainly more difficult to buy a false caste
certificate than a false income certificate.
5. Reservation is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The main
aim is to achieve the active participation and sharing by the "socially
excluded" humanity in all the fields of the affairs of the society. It is
not panacea for all ills, neither it is permanent. It would be a temporary
measure till such time the matrimonial advertisements in newspaper columns
continue to contain the mention of caste.
Q: Should there be a creamy layer criterion or not?
The demand from anti-reservationists for introduction of creamy layer is
ploy to scuttle the whole effectiveness of reservations. Even now out of all
seats meant for SC/STs in IITs , 25-40 % seats remain vacant because it
seems IITs do not find suitable candidates. Just imagine what would happen
if by applying creamy layer criterion the SC/ST middle class, lower middle
class people who are in position to take decent education are excluded from
reservations benefit ! Will the poor among SC/STs be able to compete with
these 'privileged 'students' trained under Ramaiah and at various IIT-JEE
training centers at Kota ?
Of course Not.
This will lead to 100 % seats in IITs for SC/STs going vacant.
Q: How long should the reservations continue?
The answer to this question lies with the anti-reservationists. It depends
on how sincerely and effectively the policy makers which constitute
"privileged castes" people in executive, judiciary and legislature,
implement the reservations policy.
Is it just on part of "privileged castes" people who have enjoyed undeclared
exclusive reservations for past 3000 years and continue to enjoy the same
even in 21st century in all religious institutions and places of worship, to
ask for the timelines for reservations policy?
Why do not they ask, how long the exclusive reservations for particular
community in the religious institutions and places of worship are going to
continue?
The people who have acquired disabilities due to inhuman subjugation for
3000 years will need substantial time to come over those disabilities. 50
years of affirmative action is nothing as compared to 3000 years of
subjugation.
Q: Will not the reservations based on castes lead to divisions in the
society?
There are apprehensions that reservations will lead to the divisions in the
society. These apprehensions are totally irrational. The society is already
divided into different castes. On the contrary reservations will help in
annihilating the caste system. There are around 5000 castes among the SC/ST
and OBCs. By grouping these various castes under 3 broad categories of SC,
ST and OBC, the differences among 5000 separate castes can be abridged. This
is a best way of annihilation of castes. Therefore rather than making
rhetoric about reservations leading to divisions in the society the
anti-reservationists should make honest and sincere efforts to annihilate
castes. Have these people made any efforts towards this direction? In most
of the cases the answer is NO. The people making these anti-reservations
rhetoric, all this time have been enjoying all the privileges that the
Indian caste system offers to the "Privileged Castes". As long as they enjoy
the privileges of the caste system they do not have any qualms regarding it.
But when it comes to making castes as basis for achieving social equality by
providing representations these same people make noises. These are the
double standards of highest order practiced by the 'privileged' people.
Q: Will not reservations affect the Merit?
As regards to how Merit is defined in a very narrow sense and what it
actually means, following is the quote from an article by Prof Rahul Barman
of IIT Kanpur.
"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. "
Reservations of more than 60 % have existed in the 4 states of southern
India and around 40 % in Maharashtra since last 50 years. On other hand in
the north Indian states the 15 % 'privileged castes' have been enjoying 77 %
of the seats in educational institutions and in employment (assuming that 23
% reservations for SC/STs are totally filled, which is not the case). The
World Bank study has found that all the 4 south Indian states are much ahead
of north Indian states in terms of their human development index. It is a
common knowledge that all the southern states and Maharashtra are much ahead
in fields of education, health, industrial development, in implementing
poverty alleviation schemes, etc. than the north Indian states. This shows
that reservations have indeed helped the southern Indian states in making
progress on various fronts. Whereas lack of adequate reservations is
responsible for the lack of development in most of the north Indian states.
Q: Have existing reservations for SC/STs been effective or not?
The reservation policy in the public sector has benefited a lot of people.
The Central government alone has 14 lakh employees. The proportion of
Scheduled castes in class III and IV is well above the quota of 16 per cent
and in class I and II, the proportion is around 8–12 per cent. So, the
middle and the lower middle class that we see today from the Dalit community
is because of reservation. With no reservation, the entry of these people in
government services would have been doubtful.
The situation is similar in education. An article in the EPW (Economic and
Political Weekly) estimates that there are seven lakh SC /ST students in
higher education and about half of them are there because of reservation.
Reservation has certainly helped but there are limitations in any policy
with the way it is implemented.
Friday, June 23, 2006
What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream
From a talk at Z Media Institute June 1997
By Noam Chomsky
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about what’s played up and what isn’t and the way things are structured.
My impression is the media aren’t very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion—there are some extra constraints—but it’s not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.
You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you’re lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn’t mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.
Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part—trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.
Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times—people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class—they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.
The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that’s what the New York Times tells us is what you’re supposed to care about tomorrow. If you are an editor in Dayton, Ohio, you would sort of have to do that, because you don’t have much else in the way of resources. If you get off line, if you’re producing stories that the big press doesn’t like, you’ll hear about it pretty soon. In fact, what just happened at San Jose Mercury News is a dramatic example of this. So there are a lot of ways in which power plays can drive you right back into line if you move out. If you try to break the mold, you’re not going to last long. That framework works pretty well, and it is understandable that it is just a reflection of obvious power structures.
The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.
What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.
What about their institutional setting? Well, that’s more or less the same. What they interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities. Because the media are a doctrinal system they interact closely with the universities. Say you are a reporter writing a story on Southeast Asia or Africa, or something like that. You’re supposed to go over to the big university and find an expert who will tell you what to write, or else go to one of the foundations, like Brookings Institute or American Enterprise Institute and they will give you the words to say. These outside institutions are very similar to the media.
The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it’s generally true of corporations. It’s true of fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic. It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on.
If you’ve read George Orwell’s Animal Farm which he wrote in the mid-1940s, it was a satire on the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state. It was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Turns out he wrote an introduction to Animal Farm which was suppressed. It only appeared 30 years later. Someone had found it in his papers. The introduction to Animal Farm was about "Literary Censorship in England" and what it says is that obviously this book is ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian structure. But he said England is not all that different. We don’t have the KGB on our neck, but the end result comes out pretty much the same. People who have independent ideas or who think the wrong kind of thoughts are cut out.
He talks a little, only two sentences, about the institutional structure. He asks, why does this happen? Well, one, because the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public. The other thing he says is that when you go through the elite education system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that there are certain things it’s not proper to say and there are certain thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of elite institutions and if you don’t adapt to that, you’re usually out. Those two sentences more or less tell the story.
When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure." Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.
Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.
Well, what do you expect to happen? What would you predict about the nature of the media product, given that set of circumstances? What would be the null hypothesis, the kind of conjecture that you’d make assuming nothing further. The obvious assumption is that the product of the media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them. If that wouldn’t happen, it would be kind of a miracle.
Okay, then comes the hard work. You ask, does it work the way you predict? Well, you can judge for yourselves. There’s lots of material on this obvious hypothesis, which has been subjected to the hardest tests anybody can think of, and still stands up remarkably well. You virtually never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly supports any conclusion, which is not a big surprise, because it would be miraculous if it didn’t hold up given the way the forces are operating.
The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. That is, the hypothesis that anyone would come across without even knowing anything that is not allowed to be expressed, and the evidence bearing on it cannot be discussed. Well, you predict that too. If you look at the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there. So you have a second order of prediction which is that the first order of prediction is not allowed into the discussion.
The last thing to look at is the doctrinal framework in which this proceeds. Do people at high levels in the information system, including the media and advertising and academic political science and so on, do these people have a picture of what ought to happen when they are writing for each other (not when they are making graduation speeches)? When you make a commencement speech, it is pretty words and stuff. But when they are writing for one another, what do people say about it?
There are basically three currents to look at. One is the public relations industry, you know, the main business propaganda industry. So what are the leaders of the PR industry saying? Second place to look is at what are called public intellectuals, big thinkers, people who write the "op eds" and that sort of thing. What do they say? The people who write impressive books about the nature of democracy and that sort of business. The third thing you look at is the academic stream, particularly that part of political science which is concerned with communications and information and that stuff which has been a branch of political science for the last 70 or 80 years.
So, look at those three things and see what they say, and look at the leading figures who have written about this. They all say (I’m partly quoting), the general population is "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders." We have to keep them out of the public arena because they are too stupid and if they get involved they will just make trouble. Their job is to be "spectators," not "participants."
They are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be. But the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" have to be observers not participants. The participants are what are called the "responsible men" and, of course, the writer is always one of them. You never ask the question, why am I a "responsible man" and somebody else is in jail? The answer is pretty obvious. It’s because you are obedient and subordinate to power and that other person may be independent, and so on. But you don’t ask, of course. So there are the smart guys who are supposed to run the show and the rest of them are supposed to be out, and we should not succumb to (I’m quoting from an academic article) "democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interest." They are not. They are terrible judges of their own interests so we have do it for them for their own benefit.
Actually, it is very similar to Leninism. We do things for you and we are doing it in the interest of everyone, and so on. I suspect that’s part of the reason why it’s been so easy historically for people to shift up and back from being, sort of enthusiastic Stalinists to being big supporters of U.S. power. People switch very quickly from one position to the other, and my suspicion is that it’s because basically it is the same position. You’re not making much of a switch. You’re just making a different estimate of where power lies. One point you think it’s here, another point you think it’s there. You take the same position.
How did all this evolve? It has an interesting history. A lot of it comes out of the first World War, which is a big turning point. It changed the position of the United States in the world considerably. In the 18th century the U.S. was already the richest place in the world. The quality of life, health, and longevity was not achieved by the upper classes in Britain until the early 20th century, let alone anybody else in the world. The U.S. was extraordinarily wealthy, with huge advantages, and, by the end of the 19th century, it had by far the biggest economy in the world. But it was not a big player on the world scene. U.S. power extended to the Caribbean Islands, parts of the Pacific, but not much farther.
During the first World War, the relations changed. And they changed more dramatically during the second World War. After the second World War the U.S. more or less took over the world. But after first World War there was already a change and the U.S. shifted from being a debtor to a creditor nation. It wasn’t huge, like Britain, but it became a substantial actor in the world for the first time. That was one change, but there were other changes.
The first World War was the first time there was highly organized state propaganda. The British had a Ministry of Information, and they really needed it because they had to get the U.S. into the war or else they were in bad trouble. The Ministry of Information was mainly geared to sending propaganda, including huge fabrications about "Hun" atrocities, and so on. They were targeting American intellectuals on the reasonable assumption that these are the people who are most gullible and most likely to believe propaganda. They are also the ones that disseminate it through their own system. So it was mostly geared to American intellectuals and it worked very well. The British Ministry of Information documents (a lot have been released) show their goal was, as they put it, to control the thought of the entire world, a minor goal, but mainly the U.S. They didn’t care much what people thought in India. This Ministry of Information was extremely successful in deluding hot shot American intellectuals into accepting British propaganda fabrications. They were very proud of that. Properly so, it saved their lives. They would have lost the first World War otherwise.
In the U.S., there was a counterpart. Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform. The U.S. was a very pacifist country. It has always been. People don’t want to go fight foreign wars. The country was very much opposed to the first World War and Wilson was, in fact, elected on an anti-war position. "Peace without victory" was the slogan. But he was intending to go to war. So the question was, how do you get the pacifist population to become raving anti-German lunatics so they want to go kill all the Germans? That requires propaganda. So they set up the first and really only major state propaganda agency in U.S. history. The Committee on Public Information it was called (nice Orwellian title), called also the Creel Commission. The guy who ran it was named Creel. The task of this commission was to propagandize the population into a jingoist hysteria. It worked incredibly well. Within a few months there was a raving war hysteria and the U.S. was able to go to war.
A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One person impressed, and this had some implications for the future, was Hitler. If you read Mein Kampf, he concludes, with some justification, that Germany lost the first World War because it lost the propaganda battle. They could not begin to compete with British and American propaganda which absolutely overwhelmed them. He pledges that next time around they’ll have their own propaganda system, which they did during the second World War. More important for us, the American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort. They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic. A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.
So what do you do? It’s going to be harder to run things as a private club. Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. There had been public relation specialists but there was never a public relations industry. There was a guy hired to make Rockefeller’s image look prettier and that sort of thing. But this huge public relations industry, which is a U.S. invention and a monstrous industry, came out of the first World War. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. The term "propaganda," incidentally, did not have negative connotations in those days. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around 1925, and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies." These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.
This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru. He was an authentic Roosevelt/Kennedy liberal. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U.S.-backed coup which overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala.
His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn’t smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.
Another member of the Creel Commission was Walter Lippmann, the most respected figure in American journalism for about half a century (I mean serious American journalism, serious think pieces). He also wrote what are called progressive essays on democracy, regarded as progressive back in the 1920s. He was, again, applying the lessons of the work on propaganda very explicitly. He says there is a new art in democracy called manufacture of consent. That is his phrase. Edward Herman and I borrowed it for our book, but it comes from Lippmann. So, he says, there is this new art in the method of democracy, "manufacture of consent." By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate. So we’ll have a real democracy. It will work properly. That’s applying the lessons of the propaganda agency.
Academic social science and political science comes out of the same thing. The founder of what’s called communications and academic political science is Harold Lasswell. His main achievement was a book, a study of propaganda. He says, very frankly, the things I was quoting before—those things about not succumbing to democratic dogmatism, that comes from academic political science (Lasswell and others). Again, drawing the lessons from the war time experience, political parties drew the same lessons, especially the conservative party in England. Their early documents, just being released, show they also recognized the achievements of the British Ministry of Information. They recognized that the country was getting more democratized and it wouldn’t be a private men’s club. So the conclusion was, as they put it, politics has to become political warfare, applying the mechanisms of propaganda that worked so brilliantly during the first World War towards controlling people’s thoughts.
That’s the doctrinal side and it coincides with the institutional structure. It strengthens the predictions about the way the thing should work. And the predictions are well confirmed. But these conclusions, also, are not allowed to be discussed. This is all now part of mainstream literature but it is only for people on the inside. When you go to college, you don’t read the classics about how to control peoples minds.
Just like you don’t read what James Madison said during the constitutional convention about how the main goal of the new system has to be "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," and has to be designed so that it achieves that end. This is the founding of the constitutional system, so nobody studies it. You can’t even find it in the academic scholarship unless you really look hard.
That is roughly the picture, as I see it, of the way the system is institutionally, the doctrines that lie behind it, the way it comes out. There is another part directed to the "ignorant meddlesome" outsiders. That is mainly using diversion of one kind or another. From that, I think, you can predict what you would expect to find.
By Noam Chomsky
Part of the reason why I write about the media is because I am interested in the whole intellectual culture, and the part of it that is easiest to study is the media. It comes out every day. You can do a systematic investigation. You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about what’s played up and what isn’t and the way things are structured.
My impression is the media aren’t very different from scholarship or from, say, journals of intellectual opinion—there are some extra constraints—but it’s not radically different. They interact, which is why people go up and back quite easily among them.
You look at the media, or at any institution you want to understand. You ask questions about its internal institutional structure. You want to know something about their setting in the broader society. How do they relate to other systems of power and authority? If you’re lucky, there is an internal record from leading people in the information system which tells you what they are up to (it is sort of a doctrinal system). That doesn’t mean the public relations handouts but what they say to each other about what they are up to. There is quite a lot of interesting documentation.
Those are three major sources of information about the nature of the media. You want to study them the way, say, a scientist would study some complex molecule or something. You take a look at the structure and then make some hypothesis based on the structure as to what the media product is likely to look like. Then you investigate the media product and see how well it conforms to the hypotheses. Virtually all work in media analysis is this last part—trying to study carefully just what the media product is and whether it conforms to obvious assumptions about the nature and structure of the media.
Well, what do you find? First of all, you find that there are different media which do different things, like the entertainment/Hollywood, soap operas, and so on, or even most of the newspapers in the country (the overwhelming majority of them). They are directing the mass audience.
There is another sector of the media, the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media because they are the ones with the big resources, they set the framework in which everyone else operates. The New York Times and CBS, that kind of thing. Their audience is mostly privileged people. The people who read the New York Times—people who are wealthy or part of what is sometimes called the political class—they are actually involved in the political system in an ongoing fashion. They are basically managers of one sort or another. They can be political managers, business managers (like corporate executives or that sort of thing), doctoral managers (like university professors), or other journalists who are involved in organizing the way people think and look at things.
The elite media set a framework within which others operate. If you are watching the Associated Press, who grind out a constant flow of news, in the mid-afternoon it breaks and there is something that comes along every day that says "Notice to Editors: Tomorrow’s New York Times is going to have the following stories on the front page." The point of that is, if you’re an editor of a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio and you don’t have the resources to figure out what the news is, or you don’t want to think about it anyway, this tells you what the news is. These are the stories for the quarter page that you are going to devote to something other than local affairs or diverting your audience. These are the stories that you put there because that’s what the New York Times tells us is what you’re supposed to care about tomorrow. If you are an editor in Dayton, Ohio, you would sort of have to do that, because you don’t have much else in the way of resources. If you get off line, if you’re producing stories that the big press doesn’t like, you’ll hear about it pretty soon. In fact, what just happened at San Jose Mercury News is a dramatic example of this. So there are a lot of ways in which power plays can drive you right back into line if you move out. If you try to break the mold, you’re not going to last long. That framework works pretty well, and it is understandable that it is just a reflection of obvious power structures.
The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.
What are the elite media, the agenda-setting ones? The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don’t like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system.
What about their institutional setting? Well, that’s more or less the same. What they interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities. Because the media are a doctrinal system they interact closely with the universities. Say you are a reporter writing a story on Southeast Asia or Africa, or something like that. You’re supposed to go over to the big university and find an expert who will tell you what to write, or else go to one of the foundations, like Brookings Institute or American Enterprise Institute and they will give you the words to say. These outside institutions are very similar to the media.
The universities, for example, are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it’s generally true of corporations. It’s true of fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic. It’s dependent on outside sources of support and those sources of support, such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government (which is so closely interlinked with corporate power you can barely distinguish them), they are essentially what the universities are in the middle of. People within them, who don’t adjust to that structure, who don’t accept it and internalize it (you can’t really work with it unless you internalize it, and believe it); people who don’t do that are likely to be weeded out along the way, starting from kindergarten, all the way up. There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don’t do that, you are a troublemaker. So, it is kind of a filtering device which ends up with people who really honestly (they aren’t lying) internalize the framework of belief and attitudes of the surrounding power system in the society. The elite institutions like, say, Harvard and Princeton and the small upscale colleges, for example, are very much geared to socialization. If you go through a place like Harvard, most of what goes on there is teaching manners; how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on.
If you’ve read George Orwell’s Animal Farm which he wrote in the mid-1940s, it was a satire on the Soviet Union, a totalitarian state. It was a big hit. Everybody loved it. Turns out he wrote an introduction to Animal Farm which was suppressed. It only appeared 30 years later. Someone had found it in his papers. The introduction to Animal Farm was about "Literary Censorship in England" and what it says is that obviously this book is ridiculing the Soviet Union and its totalitarian structure. But he said England is not all that different. We don’t have the KGB on our neck, but the end result comes out pretty much the same. People who have independent ideas or who think the wrong kind of thoughts are cut out.
He talks a little, only two sentences, about the institutional structure. He asks, why does this happen? Well, one, because the press is owned by wealthy people who only want certain things to reach the public. The other thing he says is that when you go through the elite education system, when you go through the proper schools in Oxford, you learn that there are certain things it’s not proper to say and there are certain thoughts that are not proper to have. That is the socialization role of elite institutions and if you don’t adapt to that, you’re usually out. Those two sentences more or less tell the story.
When you critique the media and you say, look, here is what Anthony Lewis or somebody else is writing, they get very angry. They say, quite correctly, "nobody ever tells me what to write. I write anything I like. All this business about pressures and constraints is nonsense because I’m never under any pressure." Which is completely true, but the point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like. The same is mostly true of university faculty in the more ideological disciplines. They have been through the socialization system.
Okay, you look at the structure of that whole system. What do you expect the news to be like? Well, it’s pretty obvious. Take the New York Times. It’s a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it’s big businesses.
Well, what do you expect to happen? What would you predict about the nature of the media product, given that set of circumstances? What would be the null hypothesis, the kind of conjecture that you’d make assuming nothing further. The obvious assumption is that the product of the media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them. If that wouldn’t happen, it would be kind of a miracle.
Okay, then comes the hard work. You ask, does it work the way you predict? Well, you can judge for yourselves. There’s lots of material on this obvious hypothesis, which has been subjected to the hardest tests anybody can think of, and still stands up remarkably well. You virtually never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly supports any conclusion, which is not a big surprise, because it would be miraculous if it didn’t hold up given the way the forces are operating.
The next thing you discover is that this whole topic is completely taboo. If you go to the Kennedy School of Government or Stanford, or somewhere, and you study journalism and communications or academic political science, and so on, these questions are not likely to appear. That is, the hypothesis that anyone would come across without even knowing anything that is not allowed to be expressed, and the evidence bearing on it cannot be discussed. Well, you predict that too. If you look at the institutional structure, you would say, yeah, sure, that’s got to happen because why should these guys want to be exposed? Why should they allow critical analysis of what they are up to take place? The answer is, there is no reason why they should allow that and, in fact, they don’t. Again, it is not purposeful censorship. It is just that you don’t make it to those positions. That includes the left (what is called the left), as well as the right. Unless you have been adequately socialized and trained so that there are some thoughts you just don’t have, because if you did have them, you wouldn’t be there. So you have a second order of prediction which is that the first order of prediction is not allowed into the discussion.
The last thing to look at is the doctrinal framework in which this proceeds. Do people at high levels in the information system, including the media and advertising and academic political science and so on, do these people have a picture of what ought to happen when they are writing for each other (not when they are making graduation speeches)? When you make a commencement speech, it is pretty words and stuff. But when they are writing for one another, what do people say about it?
There are basically three currents to look at. One is the public relations industry, you know, the main business propaganda industry. So what are the leaders of the PR industry saying? Second place to look is at what are called public intellectuals, big thinkers, people who write the "op eds" and that sort of thing. What do they say? The people who write impressive books about the nature of democracy and that sort of business. The third thing you look at is the academic stream, particularly that part of political science which is concerned with communications and information and that stuff which has been a branch of political science for the last 70 or 80 years.
So, look at those three things and see what they say, and look at the leading figures who have written about this. They all say (I’m partly quoting), the general population is "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders." We have to keep them out of the public arena because they are too stupid and if they get involved they will just make trouble. Their job is to be "spectators," not "participants."
They are allowed to vote every once in a while, pick out one of us smart guys. But then they are supposed to go home and do something else like watch football or whatever it may be. But the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders" have to be observers not participants. The participants are what are called the "responsible men" and, of course, the writer is always one of them. You never ask the question, why am I a "responsible man" and somebody else is in jail? The answer is pretty obvious. It’s because you are obedient and subordinate to power and that other person may be independent, and so on. But you don’t ask, of course. So there are the smart guys who are supposed to run the show and the rest of them are supposed to be out, and we should not succumb to (I’m quoting from an academic article) "democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interest." They are not. They are terrible judges of their own interests so we have do it for them for their own benefit.
Actually, it is very similar to Leninism. We do things for you and we are doing it in the interest of everyone, and so on. I suspect that’s part of the reason why it’s been so easy historically for people to shift up and back from being, sort of enthusiastic Stalinists to being big supporters of U.S. power. People switch very quickly from one position to the other, and my suspicion is that it’s because basically it is the same position. You’re not making much of a switch. You’re just making a different estimate of where power lies. One point you think it’s here, another point you think it’s there. You take the same position.
How did all this evolve? It has an interesting history. A lot of it comes out of the first World War, which is a big turning point. It changed the position of the United States in the world considerably. In the 18th century the U.S. was already the richest place in the world. The quality of life, health, and longevity was not achieved by the upper classes in Britain until the early 20th century, let alone anybody else in the world. The U.S. was extraordinarily wealthy, with huge advantages, and, by the end of the 19th century, it had by far the biggest economy in the world. But it was not a big player on the world scene. U.S. power extended to the Caribbean Islands, parts of the Pacific, but not much farther.
During the first World War, the relations changed. And they changed more dramatically during the second World War. After the second World War the U.S. more or less took over the world. But after first World War there was already a change and the U.S. shifted from being a debtor to a creditor nation. It wasn’t huge, like Britain, but it became a substantial actor in the world for the first time. That was one change, but there were other changes.
The first World War was the first time there was highly organized state propaganda. The British had a Ministry of Information, and they really needed it because they had to get the U.S. into the war or else they were in bad trouble. The Ministry of Information was mainly geared to sending propaganda, including huge fabrications about "Hun" atrocities, and so on. They were targeting American intellectuals on the reasonable assumption that these are the people who are most gullible and most likely to believe propaganda. They are also the ones that disseminate it through their own system. So it was mostly geared to American intellectuals and it worked very well. The British Ministry of Information documents (a lot have been released) show their goal was, as they put it, to control the thought of the entire world, a minor goal, but mainly the U.S. They didn’t care much what people thought in India. This Ministry of Information was extremely successful in deluding hot shot American intellectuals into accepting British propaganda fabrications. They were very proud of that. Properly so, it saved their lives. They would have lost the first World War otherwise.
In the U.S., there was a counterpart. Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform. The U.S. was a very pacifist country. It has always been. People don’t want to go fight foreign wars. The country was very much opposed to the first World War and Wilson was, in fact, elected on an anti-war position. "Peace without victory" was the slogan. But he was intending to go to war. So the question was, how do you get the pacifist population to become raving anti-German lunatics so they want to go kill all the Germans? That requires propaganda. So they set up the first and really only major state propaganda agency in U.S. history. The Committee on Public Information it was called (nice Orwellian title), called also the Creel Commission. The guy who ran it was named Creel. The task of this commission was to propagandize the population into a jingoist hysteria. It worked incredibly well. Within a few months there was a raving war hysteria and the U.S. was able to go to war.
A lot of people were impressed by these achievements. One person impressed, and this had some implications for the future, was Hitler. If you read Mein Kampf, he concludes, with some justification, that Germany lost the first World War because it lost the propaganda battle. They could not begin to compete with British and American propaganda which absolutely overwhelmed them. He pledges that next time around they’ll have their own propaganda system, which they did during the second World War. More important for us, the American business community was also very impressed with the propaganda effort. They had a problem at that time. The country was becoming formally more democratic. A lot more people were able to vote and that sort of thing. The country was becoming wealthier and more people could participate and a lot of new immigrants were coming in, and so on.
So what do you do? It’s going to be harder to run things as a private club. Therefore, obviously, you have to control what people think. There had been public relation specialists but there was never a public relations industry. There was a guy hired to make Rockefeller’s image look prettier and that sort of thing. But this huge public relations industry, which is a U.S. invention and a monstrous industry, came out of the first World War. The leading figures were people in the Creel Commission. In fact, the main one, Edward Bernays, comes right out of the Creel Commission. He has a book that came out right afterwards called Propaganda. The term "propaganda," incidentally, did not have negative connotations in those days. It was during the second World War that the term became taboo because it was connected with Germany, and all those bad things. But in this period, the term propaganda just meant information or something like that. So he wrote a book called Propaganda around 1925, and it starts off by saying he is applying the lessons of the first World War. The propaganda system of the first World War and this commission that he was part of showed, he says, it is possible to "regiment the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments their bodies." These new techniques of regimentation of minds, he said, had to be used by the intelligent minorities in order to make sure that the slobs stay on the right course. We can do it now because we have these new techniques.
This is the main manual of the public relations industry. Bernays is kind of the guru. He was an authentic Roosevelt/Kennedy liberal. He also engineered the public relations effort behind the U.S.-backed coup which overthrew the democratic government of Guatemala.
His major coup, the one that really propelled him into fame in the late 1920s, was getting women to smoke. Women didn’t smoke in those days and he ran huge campaigns for Chesterfield. You know all the techniques—models and movie stars with cigarettes coming out of their mouths and that kind of thing. He got enormous praise for that. So he became a leading figure of the industry, and his book was the real manual.
Another member of the Creel Commission was Walter Lippmann, the most respected figure in American journalism for about half a century (I mean serious American journalism, serious think pieces). He also wrote what are called progressive essays on democracy, regarded as progressive back in the 1920s. He was, again, applying the lessons of the work on propaganda very explicitly. He says there is a new art in democracy called manufacture of consent. That is his phrase. Edward Herman and I borrowed it for our book, but it comes from Lippmann. So, he says, there is this new art in the method of democracy, "manufacture of consent." By manufacturing consent, you can overcome the fact that formally a lot of people have the right to vote. We can make it irrelevant because we can manufacture consent and make sure that their choices and attitudes will be structured in such a way that they will always do what we tell them, even if they have a formal way to participate. So we’ll have a real democracy. It will work properly. That’s applying the lessons of the propaganda agency.
Academic social science and political science comes out of the same thing. The founder of what’s called communications and academic political science is Harold Lasswell. His main achievement was a book, a study of propaganda. He says, very frankly, the things I was quoting before—those things about not succumbing to democratic dogmatism, that comes from academic political science (Lasswell and others). Again, drawing the lessons from the war time experience, political parties drew the same lessons, especially the conservative party in England. Their early documents, just being released, show they also recognized the achievements of the British Ministry of Information. They recognized that the country was getting more democratized and it wouldn’t be a private men’s club. So the conclusion was, as they put it, politics has to become political warfare, applying the mechanisms of propaganda that worked so brilliantly during the first World War towards controlling people’s thoughts.
That’s the doctrinal side and it coincides with the institutional structure. It strengthens the predictions about the way the thing should work. And the predictions are well confirmed. But these conclusions, also, are not allowed to be discussed. This is all now part of mainstream literature but it is only for people on the inside. When you go to college, you don’t read the classics about how to control peoples minds.
Just like you don’t read what James Madison said during the constitutional convention about how the main goal of the new system has to be "to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," and has to be designed so that it achieves that end. This is the founding of the constitutional system, so nobody studies it. You can’t even find it in the academic scholarship unless you really look hard.
That is roughly the picture, as I see it, of the way the system is institutionally, the doctrines that lie behind it, the way it comes out. There is another part directed to the "ignorant meddlesome" outsiders. That is mainly using diversion of one kind or another. From that, I think, you can predict what you would expect to find.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Reply from Prof Altbach
Respected Mineguruji
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Just a few thoughts in
response:
1. I was trying to do one small thing in my short article -- point out
that if India is to be a dynamic force in the global economy, it has to have
a internationally competitive to sector of its higher education
system--and that requires meritocracy, resources, and so on.
2. What US affirmative action in higher education did was NOT to
reserve seats for designated minorities but rather to provide incentives to
enroll minorities. The system has worked reasonably well, but the present
conservative government has cut back on these programs. It is a
complex issue.
--
Philip G. Altbach
Monan professor of Higher Education
USA
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Just a few thoughts in
response:
1. I was trying to do one small thing in my short article -- point out
that if India is to be a dynamic force in the global economy, it has to have
a internationally competitive to sector of its higher education
system--and that requires meritocracy, resources, and so on.
2. What US affirmative action in higher education did was NOT to
reserve seats for designated minorities but rather to provide incentives to
enroll minorities. The system has worked reasonably well, but the present
conservative government has cut back on these programs. It is a
complex issue.
--
Philip G. Altbach
Monan professor of Higher Education
USA
Friday, June 16, 2006
A letter to Prof AltBach
Respected Professor Altbach
I read your article on the issue of reservations in
higher education in India in the Indian Express. I was
wondering why a Professor from United States would
concern himself with this issue which has troubled the
Indian society for the last two months.
Consequently, I made a google search for you and i
was not surprised to find that you are one of the top
authorities on international education, and have
written prodigiously on education in the Asian and
Eastern countries.
However, what flummoxed me was the manner in which you
have put forward your views regarding the quota debate
and that too in India Express, a paper which is
identified far too close with upper caste elite of
India.
Since the inception of reervations and affirmative
ation, this paper under Arun Shourie and Shekhar Gupta
has been opposing the same.
And the reason for this is simple, Indian Express has
Ninety nine percent staff that belongs to upper caste
particulalry in the newsroom. Similar, is the case
with majority of media houses in India, which employ
only upper castes in the news room.
The lower castes are also employed but only for
scrubbing the floors, as such when you give your
enlightened views in such a biased newspaper, for
majority of Indian population, it means that you are
on the side of the high and the mighty upper caste
elite.
I have never been to USA but i believe that newspapers
in USA have a fair sprinkiling of Blacks in their
ranks, though they are bound to so due to government
rules.
As far as your arguments in the column are concerned,
i agree with you that every country requires elite
institutions to take it ahead, but i would like to ask
why these intitutions should remain only in the hands
of upper castes like the Brahmins and Banias. As far
as your conention that India has very poor quality of
education, i will say that for the last thousands of
years the education system has been monopolized by a
single caste which was not represenative of the entire
country.
What the Indian government is trying to do is just to
ensure like yours did in 1964, that sons of artisans,
oil millers, farmers, potters, boatmen, barbers are
also able to enter these elite institutions.
The reason why India is poor on quality education is
that due to socialism of Nehru and Gandhi family,
education was tighltly controlled by the government,
which was ofcourse dominated by upper castes.
So this ensured that while the kith and kin of these
people could get quality education in India and
abroad, the lower castes kept on living in the
medieval ages.
I will like to ask whether the entry of Blacks at
Harward, Yale, Columbia and MIT has made them poorer
academically or qualitatively.
You mention that the quota policy in India has been
hotly contested by the academia and the media. I agree
and will like to add that quota policy was vehemently
opposed and rubbished, not just opposed.
This happend because overwhelming majority of
acedemics, media and medicos belong to the upper
castes and they will never agree to relinquish the
privileges bestowed upon them for millions of years.
Sir, you say that the quota candidates will score 0
marks and still get admission, this is a wrong
perception of the story.
I think you are talking a lot to upper caste Indian
students and journalists and this is the reason you
have got this impression.
It is pertinent to mention here that the population of
OBCs and SC/STs in India is close to 70 crores or 700
million, and these people are quite intelligent and a
number of them are competing with the upper castes in
open category.
However, because they are concentrated in rural and
non-english speaking areas, they face difficulty in
competing with elite and once given a chance, i
promise to you that they will beat even the best
American students. Infact the population of depressed
classes in India is more than the total population of
USA.
Secondly, no one is given admission below a cutoff
percentage in India and if you compare the results of
the general and reservaed categories, you will see
that their is not much difference.
The depressed students face trouble in colleges due to
casteism and racism and that is why some of them fail
to get through. While you sit in USA , you enjoy the
benefits of the first Amendment, but just come and
visit one the villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and
you will understand hwat casteism means.
We dont want an end to elite colleges but sir, what we
want is that monopoly of upper castes should end there
and they should be open to depressed classes like the
black in USA.
You have mentioned that Education institutions should
have meritocratic values but do you think that giving
more chances to depressed classes will dilute the so
called merit, when all of these institutions are
giving admissions to NRI candidates in lieu of hefty
capitation fee, where does merit go in this case.
You say, government support is must, but when the
government supports these colleges, then the can not
function as private domain of a particular caste or
class but they must share the constitutional
responsibilities. Did not US government force the
Blacks into American universities. I think even today
if given a chance the whites will like to throw off
the black yoke.
Who is stopping the Indian universities from
internationalization. Do you think quota prevents them
from getting connected. However, for Indians
internationalization means getting a positions at a US
university or in a multinational company at government
cost.
I must informa you that teaching in India is not a hot
profession, people, who have failed to get jobs become
teachers. Or else their are family teachers, who have
connections in the University and manage to get a job.
Reaserach in the Indian universities, for a majority
of them is not a top priority and neither the elite
IITs and IIms. Indians are happy with reverse
engineering and old US technology. Whatever R&D
happens is accidental and not linked to education
system.
The best and brightest in India do not like to join
academics, they prefer MNCs and US universities, where
they can earn top dollars. Now, how on earth a third
world country can pay top dollars to a teacher or a
doctor in the wake of huge demand in the USA. You need
our docs, engineers, teachers, cleaners and every one
skilled and qualified and have the ability to pay,
what can be done.
And these people are educated on Indian taxpayers
money.
Sir, you are White and i dont know your background,
but I think you never suffered casteism. Had you been
at the ends of a casteist barrage or even racism, you
would have understood better the rationale behind
these policies. I agree that politics is behind most
of the government decisions, but then it happens every
where and even in your great democratic which has
taken up the job of spreading democracy in middle east
and central Asia.
Yours truly
I read your article on the issue of reservations in
higher education in India in the Indian Express. I was
wondering why a Professor from United States would
concern himself with this issue which has troubled the
Indian society for the last two months.
Consequently, I made a google search for you and i
was not surprised to find that you are one of the top
authorities on international education, and have
written prodigiously on education in the Asian and
Eastern countries.
However, what flummoxed me was the manner in which you
have put forward your views regarding the quota debate
and that too in India Express, a paper which is
identified far too close with upper caste elite of
India.
Since the inception of reervations and affirmative
ation, this paper under Arun Shourie and Shekhar Gupta
has been opposing the same.
And the reason for this is simple, Indian Express has
Ninety nine percent staff that belongs to upper caste
particulalry in the newsroom. Similar, is the case
with majority of media houses in India, which employ
only upper castes in the news room.
The lower castes are also employed but only for
scrubbing the floors, as such when you give your
enlightened views in such a biased newspaper, for
majority of Indian population, it means that you are
on the side of the high and the mighty upper caste
elite.
I have never been to USA but i believe that newspapers
in USA have a fair sprinkiling of Blacks in their
ranks, though they are bound to so due to government
rules.
As far as your arguments in the column are concerned,
i agree with you that every country requires elite
institutions to take it ahead, but i would like to ask
why these intitutions should remain only in the hands
of upper castes like the Brahmins and Banias. As far
as your conention that India has very poor quality of
education, i will say that for the last thousands of
years the education system has been monopolized by a
single caste which was not represenative of the entire
country.
What the Indian government is trying to do is just to
ensure like yours did in 1964, that sons of artisans,
oil millers, farmers, potters, boatmen, barbers are
also able to enter these elite institutions.
The reason why India is poor on quality education is
that due to socialism of Nehru and Gandhi family,
education was tighltly controlled by the government,
which was ofcourse dominated by upper castes.
So this ensured that while the kith and kin of these
people could get quality education in India and
abroad, the lower castes kept on living in the
medieval ages.
I will like to ask whether the entry of Blacks at
Harward, Yale, Columbia and MIT has made them poorer
academically or qualitatively.
You mention that the quota policy in India has been
hotly contested by the academia and the media. I agree
and will like to add that quota policy was vehemently
opposed and rubbished, not just opposed.
This happend because overwhelming majority of
acedemics, media and medicos belong to the upper
castes and they will never agree to relinquish the
privileges bestowed upon them for millions of years.
Sir, you say that the quota candidates will score 0
marks and still get admission, this is a wrong
perception of the story.
I think you are talking a lot to upper caste Indian
students and journalists and this is the reason you
have got this impression.
It is pertinent to mention here that the population of
OBCs and SC/STs in India is close to 70 crores or 700
million, and these people are quite intelligent and a
number of them are competing with the upper castes in
open category.
However, because they are concentrated in rural and
non-english speaking areas, they face difficulty in
competing with elite and once given a chance, i
promise to you that they will beat even the best
American students. Infact the population of depressed
classes in India is more than the total population of
USA.
Secondly, no one is given admission below a cutoff
percentage in India and if you compare the results of
the general and reservaed categories, you will see
that their is not much difference.
The depressed students face trouble in colleges due to
casteism and racism and that is why some of them fail
to get through. While you sit in USA , you enjoy the
benefits of the first Amendment, but just come and
visit one the villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and
you will understand hwat casteism means.
We dont want an end to elite colleges but sir, what we
want is that monopoly of upper castes should end there
and they should be open to depressed classes like the
black in USA.
You have mentioned that Education institutions should
have meritocratic values but do you think that giving
more chances to depressed classes will dilute the so
called merit, when all of these institutions are
giving admissions to NRI candidates in lieu of hefty
capitation fee, where does merit go in this case.
You say, government support is must, but when the
government supports these colleges, then the can not
function as private domain of a particular caste or
class but they must share the constitutional
responsibilities. Did not US government force the
Blacks into American universities. I think even today
if given a chance the whites will like to throw off
the black yoke.
Who is stopping the Indian universities from
internationalization. Do you think quota prevents them
from getting connected. However, for Indians
internationalization means getting a positions at a US
university or in a multinational company at government
cost.
I must informa you that teaching in India is not a hot
profession, people, who have failed to get jobs become
teachers. Or else their are family teachers, who have
connections in the University and manage to get a job.
Reaserach in the Indian universities, for a majority
of them is not a top priority and neither the elite
IITs and IIms. Indians are happy with reverse
engineering and old US technology. Whatever R&D
happens is accidental and not linked to education
system.
The best and brightest in India do not like to join
academics, they prefer MNCs and US universities, where
they can earn top dollars. Now, how on earth a third
world country can pay top dollars to a teacher or a
doctor in the wake of huge demand in the USA. You need
our docs, engineers, teachers, cleaners and every one
skilled and qualified and have the ability to pay,
what can be done.
And these people are educated on Indian taxpayers
money.
Sir, you are White and i dont know your background,
but I think you never suffered casteism. Had you been
at the ends of a casteist barrage or even racism, you
would have understood better the rationale behind
these policies. I agree that politics is behind most
of the government decisions, but then it happens every
where and even in your great democratic which has
taken up the job of spreading democracy in middle east
and central Asia.
Yours truly
jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni
jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni
bhagidari”
Dear friends,
1. I think one of the things that we need to do is to
bring together the original constituents of the
Bahujan Samaaj, and work towards original credo of
Bahujan Samaaj Party (BSP). Originally Bahujan Samaaj
was supposed to include all except the upper caste
Hindus – SC, ST, OBC & minority religions. And credo
of Bahujan Samaaj Party used to be “jiski jitni
sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhagidari” (power to be
shared on the basis of the numerical strength). It is
another matter that Mayawati jee has since changed the
doctrine to "jiski jitni hai taiyari, uski utni
hissedari" (power according to the level of
preparedness). She has also changed the constituents
of Bahujan Samaaj as well, replacing Muslims by
Brahmins and Other Upper Castes (OUCs), and giving up
all connections with the OBCs. However, we don’t have
to necessarily follow our political leaders like sheep
follow their herdsmen or herdswomen. We can never be
sure whether one has sold himself or herself to one or
another party or person. We need to follow the
dictates of our own logical conclusions and our
conscience.
2. Logic suggests that since we don’t have much
money, nor do have media & muscle (guns), we need to
have support of as many people with us as possible, to
achieve our goal. We must also remember that there can
never be unity among groups without fairness to each
other. What we seek from the upper caste (power-share
in proportion to our population), we must grant to our
own less fortunate brethren among us (power-share in
proportion to their population). As such, we must
support the concept of quotas within quotas, as far as
practicable. In other words, care will have to be
taken to see to it that none of the sub-groups within
the upper of the lower castes groups is able to gobble
up share of power of the other less fortunate ones. To
that end, each of the major caste groups (SC/ST/OBC)
would need to be further sub-divided into something
like, say, 2% sub-groups. There are many castes that
are bigger than 2% of the population; they should
constitute a sub-group by themselves. The ones that
are smaller than 2% would need to be grouped with
other numerically smaller castes with nearly equal
educational level to bring their joint population to
more than 2%. Each of these sub-groups may then be
allocated power in proportion to their population. If
disparity is found among the numerically small caste
constituents of a sub-group, they may perhaps use
roster to distribute power among themselves.
3. We should be cognizant that the Brahminical forces
are in a position to buy or hire some of us and make
us not only their political stooges, but also their
agents in the media as well as in academia. Among us
there may be people who would like to impress upon us
that “the social contradiction has shifted. This is
the era of Dalits vs Shudras, and Dalit movements must
accept this social reality and redraft their
strategies”. It should not be difficult for us to tell
why is someone saying whatever if we tried to figure
out where that person is getting his/her salary from.
We should not get distracted by a few incidents of a
few individuals among us exploiting some others. Truth
is that we are all selfish and exploitative. However,
in order to save ourselves from biggest exploitation
at the hands of the strongest among us (the upper
caste), we may have to, to a certain extent, overlook
selfishness and exploitative deeds of others above us,
towards us. We will oppose all exploitations (even
those by some of us against some of us) without
considering them to be our permanent enemies. Just as
we are all selfish, the truth is that no group is a
permanent enemy, or a permanent friend of any other
group. We should be open and able to cooperate with
other common victims of exploitation and injustice.
Such cooperation may strengthen their bonds so much
the relatively stronger one of them may not try to
exploit the lower ones. Biggest injustices have to be
opposed first. Smaller injustices may end due to
cooperation and subsequent goodwill in the fight in
opposition to the biggest injustices.
4. I think many of the Muslims have been too timid to
join demands for their share of pie. Brahminical
forces had blamed Muslim demand for their own share of
pie as the cause for division of the country, and that
has stuck in the minds of many Muslims. In the face of
umpteen riots in most of which Muslim casualties are
generally much higher than others, many of the Muslims
probably just feel happy to be alive. On the top of
that, of course, BJP/RSS are most vociferously against
any thing like quota for Muslims. Without giving any
specific reason, they seem to suggest that it will be
the worst possible thing for India. They seem to imply
that it (quota for Muslims) will lead to another
division of the country. However, recent news
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1637344,curpg-1.cms
from Mumbai is heartening: “Muslim groups on Sunday
demanded reservations for the community in politics
and jobs on the basis of population.” Please see the
full news below. From our side, we should make every
possible effort to bring them into movement towards
100% reservation. Needless to say, the larger is the
number of people demanding their share of pie, the
stronger will be our voice. In the absence of money,
media and muscle, we must do all that can be done to
increase our number to as much as possible, perhaps,
to at least 85%.
5. The credo of “jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski
utni bhagidari” resonates much more with European
political philosophy than with the American
philosophy. In Europe they have come to accept rights
of groups. When people talk of rights, right to
equality is the first thing that has to be granted. As
such, groups in Europe have equitable power sharing
arrangement, meaningful implementation of which
necessarily requires tacit approval of quota system.
This is more obvious in multilingual societies like
Switzerland and Belgium than in other countries that
are monolingual ones. On the other hand, in America,
at the height of their civil rights movement, when
they reluctantly had to concede equal opportunities to
their discriminated minorities, they did so under the
fuzzy name of “affirmative action”, with categorical
rejection of quotas. On account of categorical
rejection of quota system in America, we must be
careful in the use of terms like “affirmative action”
and “diversity”. These are fuzzy terms that have been
especially given currency in order to avoid the use of
quotas. That is the reason why I have seen in the
Economic Times and other newspapers some of the Indian
industrialists or their spokespersons stating “YES to
affirmative action” but an emphatic “NO to quotas”.
When the government happens to be a bit more liberal,
affirmative action may signify quota or close to
quota. On the other hand, when the government is a
conservative type, “affirmative action” and
“diversity” would mean pretty much nothing. In the
USA, affirmative action has come almost to naught.
Their diversity, in most cases consists mostly of
having a few Chinese, Indians, African Americans and
some others that look different from white. The most
deprived ones (African Americans and Spanish speaking
persons of Latin American origin) hardly get their
share of the pie. The US system has a lot to be
desired. Europe, specifically, Switzerland, is a much
better model for us to emulate than the USA. We will
talk more about the Swiss system of power-sharing in a
bit greater detail towards the end of this write up.
6. The only thing for which we can cite the example
of the USA is their use of affirmative action in the
private sector right from the beginning of enactment
of civil rights acts. They never thought the private
sector would be outside the purview of affirmative
action. On the other hand, somehow in India, people
were given the impression that private industries were
personal property of its owners and that they have to
be free in hiring and firing of their employees; that
they cannot be subjected to any kind of quota system
among their employees. Personally, I think tax
incentive is the best way of inducing the private
sector to adopt quota system. A detailed plan as to
how tax incentive can be used to make quota system
enforceable as well as palatable would be a subject
matter of a separate post.
7. Let me give a couple of more arguments in favor of
reservation system. This is because the more we are
convinced about a cause, the harder we are likely to
work for the cause. Further, in our everyday life in
arguments with our adversaries, we should be able to
strengthen our arguments from as many points of view
as possible.
7a. Making a devil’s argument, suppose there is an
identifiable group of people that happens to possess
super-intelligence. Would such a situation make it
acceptable for us to have a royal class of
super-intelligent group controlling all power? How
would such a system be different from colonialism?
Would such a system be any different from the system
envisioned by our own great rishi by the name of Manu?
If reliance on purely so-called merit-tests results in
filling all positions of power by individuals from
“super-intelligent” group alone, making them “royal
group”, and effective colonial masters, would that,
and should that, be acceptable to the majority? If the
British had so arranged that Indians would have found
it difficult to have higher education, would they have
been justified in continuing to rule our country for
perpetuity, on the basis of their performance in some
sort of merit-test? If master-slave relationship among
groups of people, i.e., colonial relationship, is not
an acceptable way of life, what is the remedy? Would
the royal class have any interest or incentive in
improving the slave-like condition of the rest of our
society? Particularly, if the super-intelligent group
happens to be in minority, would they have any stake
in any kind of democracy? Or would they reject
democracy as a politics of vote-bank?
7b. Another justification for reservation lies in
“reparation” concept. None will deny the fact that the
upper castes have oppressed the lower ones for ages
and kept them in state of serfdom and deprivation.
That calls for “reparation” for the wrongs done to the
lower castes. During the Second World War Japanese
Americans were incarcerated by the American
Government. They were later given compensation for
harm done to them. Many of the survivors of Hitler’s
holocaust were compensated by the companies that aided
Hitler. Likewise lower castes have to be compensated
for the wrongs done to them by the upper castes. What
would be the right compensation? Well, had it not been
for the oppression from the upper castes, there would
have been parity between the lower and upper castes,
in all regards, including educational and economic
situations. Therefore, all that can be done to bring
about the said parity as soon as possible (in no more
than one generation) must be done.
7c. Some upper caste individuals may claim that they
should not be penalized for wrongs done by their
fore-fathers. However, stolen goods have to be taken
away and given back to the original owners or their
progeny even if the goods were stolen by ancestors of
the current owners. Power and privileges currently
enjoyed by the upper castes, in excess of their dues
share, are nothing but goods stolen and passed on by
their ancestors. All or part of the same must be
restored back to the victims’ progenies. As for
considering it to be punitive, if we advocated
assigning a number of seats disproportionately smaller
than proportion of the upper caste in the population,
it could have been considered to be punitive.
Assigning a number of seats in proportion to their
population is nothing but just the right amount of
power they would have had, had there been no
exploitations in the past; it cannot be considered to
be punitive by any stretch of imagination. The excess
goods (disproportionate power and privilege) passed on
to the upper castes by their ancestors must be taken
away (just as any stolen goods should be taken away
from its current possessors) and distributed among the
dispossessed towards establishment of an equalitarian
society.
8. Finally, let me point out that an equalitarian
society is not a figment of imagination. It exists in
Switzerland, Belgium and the Nordic countries in
Europe. However, being a multi-lingual country, it is
most obvious in Switzerland. Here is what Wolf Linder
(in his book, “Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to
Conflict in Multicultural Societies,” St. Martin’s
Press, 1994, p-xv-xvi,) says: “Switzerland provides a
model example (for a multi-cultural society) because
of its enduring will to constitute an independent
political nation based on the mutual respect of its
minorities. It provides a model for finding political
institutions and patterns of behavior that enable
peaceful conflict-resolution in a multi-cultural
society.”
Linder further says, “Power-sharing, proportional
representation of different segments of the society,
not only in the government, but also in various
economic, social and cultural organizations of the
Swiss society appears to have become Swiss way of
life. … It is practiced in the organization of the
economy, in social life and even in sports. This is
true at least for linguistic proportional rule. As
Jurg Steiner (1990) writes: ‘It is unimaginable that
the executive committee of the Swiss Soccer
Association would consist of German-speakers only’.”
The table shown below is suggestive of quite a strict
quota system used in Switzerland.
Proportional Representation of linguistic groups
(percentages) in certain federal jobs in Switzerland:
Representation German French Italian
Population (Swiss citizen only) 74.5 20.1 4.0
Federal Administration:
All personnel 76.5 15.4 5.2
Senior staff 73.6 20.9 3.5
Top Management 78.8 19.0 2.2
Expert Committees 76.9 20.0 3.1
Presidents of committees
of the National Council 76.0 20.0 3.1
In the above table, the sums of various rows do not
add to 100, as they should. This discrepancy may
possibly be because the authors decided to ignore the
statistics about Romansch speaking people on account
of their small size – I do not know. I have simply
copied the table from the book by Wolf Linder.
In connection with European acceptance of
power-sharing, I must say that they were aided in this
direction by their system of election – Proportional
Representation (PR) system of election. All of
European countries (with the exception of England and
France) use PR or semi-PR of one kind or the other.
Under PR various parties get seats in proportion to
votes obtained by them. It helps small parties gain
representation. Weaker segments of the society can
only have small parties. On the other hand, FPTP
(first-past-the-post) system that we inherited from
the British, leads to two-party system. Moreover, the
two parties can’t differ from each other much, as they
have to try to please the “independent voters”. We
would discuss PR in greater detail in another post.
Regards,
Satinath
bhagidari”
Dear friends,
1. I think one of the things that we need to do is to
bring together the original constituents of the
Bahujan Samaaj, and work towards original credo of
Bahujan Samaaj Party (BSP). Originally Bahujan Samaaj
was supposed to include all except the upper caste
Hindus – SC, ST, OBC & minority religions. And credo
of Bahujan Samaaj Party used to be “jiski jitni
sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhagidari” (power to be
shared on the basis of the numerical strength). It is
another matter that Mayawati jee has since changed the
doctrine to "jiski jitni hai taiyari, uski utni
hissedari" (power according to the level of
preparedness). She has also changed the constituents
of Bahujan Samaaj as well, replacing Muslims by
Brahmins and Other Upper Castes (OUCs), and giving up
all connections with the OBCs. However, we don’t have
to necessarily follow our political leaders like sheep
follow their herdsmen or herdswomen. We can never be
sure whether one has sold himself or herself to one or
another party or person. We need to follow the
dictates of our own logical conclusions and our
conscience.
2. Logic suggests that since we don’t have much
money, nor do have media & muscle (guns), we need to
have support of as many people with us as possible, to
achieve our goal. We must also remember that there can
never be unity among groups without fairness to each
other. What we seek from the upper caste (power-share
in proportion to our population), we must grant to our
own less fortunate brethren among us (power-share in
proportion to their population). As such, we must
support the concept of quotas within quotas, as far as
practicable. In other words, care will have to be
taken to see to it that none of the sub-groups within
the upper of the lower castes groups is able to gobble
up share of power of the other less fortunate ones. To
that end, each of the major caste groups (SC/ST/OBC)
would need to be further sub-divided into something
like, say, 2% sub-groups. There are many castes that
are bigger than 2% of the population; they should
constitute a sub-group by themselves. The ones that
are smaller than 2% would need to be grouped with
other numerically smaller castes with nearly equal
educational level to bring their joint population to
more than 2%. Each of these sub-groups may then be
allocated power in proportion to their population. If
disparity is found among the numerically small caste
constituents of a sub-group, they may perhaps use
roster to distribute power among themselves.
3. We should be cognizant that the Brahminical forces
are in a position to buy or hire some of us and make
us not only their political stooges, but also their
agents in the media as well as in academia. Among us
there may be people who would like to impress upon us
that “the social contradiction has shifted. This is
the era of Dalits vs Shudras, and Dalit movements must
accept this social reality and redraft their
strategies”. It should not be difficult for us to tell
why is someone saying whatever if we tried to figure
out where that person is getting his/her salary from.
We should not get distracted by a few incidents of a
few individuals among us exploiting some others. Truth
is that we are all selfish and exploitative. However,
in order to save ourselves from biggest exploitation
at the hands of the strongest among us (the upper
caste), we may have to, to a certain extent, overlook
selfishness and exploitative deeds of others above us,
towards us. We will oppose all exploitations (even
those by some of us against some of us) without
considering them to be our permanent enemies. Just as
we are all selfish, the truth is that no group is a
permanent enemy, or a permanent friend of any other
group. We should be open and able to cooperate with
other common victims of exploitation and injustice.
Such cooperation may strengthen their bonds so much
the relatively stronger one of them may not try to
exploit the lower ones. Biggest injustices have to be
opposed first. Smaller injustices may end due to
cooperation and subsequent goodwill in the fight in
opposition to the biggest injustices.
4. I think many of the Muslims have been too timid to
join demands for their share of pie. Brahminical
forces had blamed Muslim demand for their own share of
pie as the cause for division of the country, and that
has stuck in the minds of many Muslims. In the face of
umpteen riots in most of which Muslim casualties are
generally much higher than others, many of the Muslims
probably just feel happy to be alive. On the top of
that, of course, BJP/RSS are most vociferously against
any thing like quota for Muslims. Without giving any
specific reason, they seem to suggest that it will be
the worst possible thing for India. They seem to imply
that it (quota for Muslims) will lead to another
division of the country. However, recent news
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1637344,curpg-1.cms
from Mumbai is heartening: “Muslim groups on Sunday
demanded reservations for the community in politics
and jobs on the basis of population.” Please see the
full news below. From our side, we should make every
possible effort to bring them into movement towards
100% reservation. Needless to say, the larger is the
number of people demanding their share of pie, the
stronger will be our voice. In the absence of money,
media and muscle, we must do all that can be done to
increase our number to as much as possible, perhaps,
to at least 85%.
5. The credo of “jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski
utni bhagidari” resonates much more with European
political philosophy than with the American
philosophy. In Europe they have come to accept rights
of groups. When people talk of rights, right to
equality is the first thing that has to be granted. As
such, groups in Europe have equitable power sharing
arrangement, meaningful implementation of which
necessarily requires tacit approval of quota system.
This is more obvious in multilingual societies like
Switzerland and Belgium than in other countries that
are monolingual ones. On the other hand, in America,
at the height of their civil rights movement, when
they reluctantly had to concede equal opportunities to
their discriminated minorities, they did so under the
fuzzy name of “affirmative action”, with categorical
rejection of quotas. On account of categorical
rejection of quota system in America, we must be
careful in the use of terms like “affirmative action”
and “diversity”. These are fuzzy terms that have been
especially given currency in order to avoid the use of
quotas. That is the reason why I have seen in the
Economic Times and other newspapers some of the Indian
industrialists or their spokespersons stating “YES to
affirmative action” but an emphatic “NO to quotas”.
When the government happens to be a bit more liberal,
affirmative action may signify quota or close to
quota. On the other hand, when the government is a
conservative type, “affirmative action” and
“diversity” would mean pretty much nothing. In the
USA, affirmative action has come almost to naught.
Their diversity, in most cases consists mostly of
having a few Chinese, Indians, African Americans and
some others that look different from white. The most
deprived ones (African Americans and Spanish speaking
persons of Latin American origin) hardly get their
share of the pie. The US system has a lot to be
desired. Europe, specifically, Switzerland, is a much
better model for us to emulate than the USA. We will
talk more about the Swiss system of power-sharing in a
bit greater detail towards the end of this write up.
6. The only thing for which we can cite the example
of the USA is their use of affirmative action in the
private sector right from the beginning of enactment
of civil rights acts. They never thought the private
sector would be outside the purview of affirmative
action. On the other hand, somehow in India, people
were given the impression that private industries were
personal property of its owners and that they have to
be free in hiring and firing of their employees; that
they cannot be subjected to any kind of quota system
among their employees. Personally, I think tax
incentive is the best way of inducing the private
sector to adopt quota system. A detailed plan as to
how tax incentive can be used to make quota system
enforceable as well as palatable would be a subject
matter of a separate post.
7. Let me give a couple of more arguments in favor of
reservation system. This is because the more we are
convinced about a cause, the harder we are likely to
work for the cause. Further, in our everyday life in
arguments with our adversaries, we should be able to
strengthen our arguments from as many points of view
as possible.
7a. Making a devil’s argument, suppose there is an
identifiable group of people that happens to possess
super-intelligence. Would such a situation make it
acceptable for us to have a royal class of
super-intelligent group controlling all power? How
would such a system be different from colonialism?
Would such a system be any different from the system
envisioned by our own great rishi by the name of Manu?
If reliance on purely so-called merit-tests results in
filling all positions of power by individuals from
“super-intelligent” group alone, making them “royal
group”, and effective colonial masters, would that,
and should that, be acceptable to the majority? If the
British had so arranged that Indians would have found
it difficult to have higher education, would they have
been justified in continuing to rule our country for
perpetuity, on the basis of their performance in some
sort of merit-test? If master-slave relationship among
groups of people, i.e., colonial relationship, is not
an acceptable way of life, what is the remedy? Would
the royal class have any interest or incentive in
improving the slave-like condition of the rest of our
society? Particularly, if the super-intelligent group
happens to be in minority, would they have any stake
in any kind of democracy? Or would they reject
democracy as a politics of vote-bank?
7b. Another justification for reservation lies in
“reparation” concept. None will deny the fact that the
upper castes have oppressed the lower ones for ages
and kept them in state of serfdom and deprivation.
That calls for “reparation” for the wrongs done to the
lower castes. During the Second World War Japanese
Americans were incarcerated by the American
Government. They were later given compensation for
harm done to them. Many of the survivors of Hitler’s
holocaust were compensated by the companies that aided
Hitler. Likewise lower castes have to be compensated
for the wrongs done to them by the upper castes. What
would be the right compensation? Well, had it not been
for the oppression from the upper castes, there would
have been parity between the lower and upper castes,
in all regards, including educational and economic
situations. Therefore, all that can be done to bring
about the said parity as soon as possible (in no more
than one generation) must be done.
7c. Some upper caste individuals may claim that they
should not be penalized for wrongs done by their
fore-fathers. However, stolen goods have to be taken
away and given back to the original owners or their
progeny even if the goods were stolen by ancestors of
the current owners. Power and privileges currently
enjoyed by the upper castes, in excess of their dues
share, are nothing but goods stolen and passed on by
their ancestors. All or part of the same must be
restored back to the victims’ progenies. As for
considering it to be punitive, if we advocated
assigning a number of seats disproportionately smaller
than proportion of the upper caste in the population,
it could have been considered to be punitive.
Assigning a number of seats in proportion to their
population is nothing but just the right amount of
power they would have had, had there been no
exploitations in the past; it cannot be considered to
be punitive by any stretch of imagination. The excess
goods (disproportionate power and privilege) passed on
to the upper castes by their ancestors must be taken
away (just as any stolen goods should be taken away
from its current possessors) and distributed among the
dispossessed towards establishment of an equalitarian
society.
8. Finally, let me point out that an equalitarian
society is not a figment of imagination. It exists in
Switzerland, Belgium and the Nordic countries in
Europe. However, being a multi-lingual country, it is
most obvious in Switzerland. Here is what Wolf Linder
(in his book, “Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to
Conflict in Multicultural Societies,” St. Martin’s
Press, 1994, p-xv-xvi,) says: “Switzerland provides a
model example (for a multi-cultural society) because
of its enduring will to constitute an independent
political nation based on the mutual respect of its
minorities. It provides a model for finding political
institutions and patterns of behavior that enable
peaceful conflict-resolution in a multi-cultural
society.”
Linder further says, “Power-sharing, proportional
representation of different segments of the society,
not only in the government, but also in various
economic, social and cultural organizations of the
Swiss society appears to have become Swiss way of
life. … It is practiced in the organization of the
economy, in social life and even in sports. This is
true at least for linguistic proportional rule. As
Jurg Steiner (1990) writes: ‘It is unimaginable that
the executive committee of the Swiss Soccer
Association would consist of German-speakers only’.”
The table shown below is suggestive of quite a strict
quota system used in Switzerland.
Proportional Representation of linguistic groups
(percentages) in certain federal jobs in Switzerland:
Representation German French Italian
Population (Swiss citizen only) 74.5 20.1 4.0
Federal Administration:
All personnel 76.5 15.4 5.2
Senior staff 73.6 20.9 3.5
Top Management 78.8 19.0 2.2
Expert Committees 76.9 20.0 3.1
Presidents of committees
of the National Council 76.0 20.0 3.1
In the above table, the sums of various rows do not
add to 100, as they should. This discrepancy may
possibly be because the authors decided to ignore the
statistics about Romansch speaking people on account
of their small size – I do not know. I have simply
copied the table from the book by Wolf Linder.
In connection with European acceptance of
power-sharing, I must say that they were aided in this
direction by their system of election – Proportional
Representation (PR) system of election. All of
European countries (with the exception of England and
France) use PR or semi-PR of one kind or the other.
Under PR various parties get seats in proportion to
votes obtained by them. It helps small parties gain
representation. Weaker segments of the society can
only have small parties. On the other hand, FPTP
(first-past-the-post) system that we inherited from
the British, leads to two-party system. Moreover, the
two parties can’t differ from each other much, as they
have to try to please the “independent voters”. We
would discuss PR in greater detail in another post.
Regards,
Satinath
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Merits of Mandal report
Merits of Mandal report
S S GILL
In view of the confusion created by Mandal II, the Supreme Court has asked the government to clarify two things: One, what is the basis for determining who belongs to an OBC category; and two, the rationale behind 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. These two points need to be immediately cleared.
OBCs belong to the shudra category in the caste classification. Several people confuse shudras with Dalits (earlier known as untouchables). OBCs were supposed to be people who lived by their physical labour.
Though not treated as untouchables, they formed the largest segment of low castes and suffered from all sorts of social disabilities. That is why they qualify to be categorised as socially and educationally backward, and thus entitled to affirmative action under the Constitution.
As to their identification, the Mandal Commission undertook the biggest social survey ever attempted in this country. To begin with, an experts' panel under the chairmanship of eminent sociologist M N Srinivas and 14 other social scientists was formed to devise schedules for identification of OBCs.
Simultaneously, Delhi University held a seminar for a thorough discussion of the terms of reference of the commission. After several meetings, the experts' panel prepared four comprehensive schedules, two each for rural and urban areas.
All the state governments were sent these schedules for conducting the survey. Two villages and one urban block were selected at random in each and every district of the country, and all the residents of these areas were covered by the survey.
Questionnaires were also sent to all the states and 30 ministries of the central government, and notices published in national dailies and regional papers inviting public response.
The data thus collected was passed on to the National Informatics Centre, which analysed the information contained in the four pre-coded schedules.
The results of this analysis were used by the experts' panel, which derived 11 indicators of social, educational and economic backwardness. It was by the application of these indicators that OBCs were identified.
As to the number of OBCs and their percentage, government had stopped collecting caste-wise enumeration of population after the 1931 census.
Consequently, the population of various OBCs identified by the commission were culled from this census, and extrapola-ted on the basis of population growth trends over this period.
That is how the percentage of OBCs was arrived at, and it worked out to 52 per cent. When the 11 indicators were applied to identify OBCs, 44 per cent happened to be Hindus and 8 per cent were from other religions.
That shows how authentic the indicators were as it picked up a fair number of non-Hindus who were socially and educationally backward.
Some commentators have pointed out that the National Sample Survey Organisation's investigations show that OBCs constitute 32 per cent of the population, and National Family Health Survey places the figure at 30 per cent.
These two surveys cannot match the span and depth of Mandal Commission's investigations, and its findings can be revised only if an exercise of the same magnitude is attempted.
It has also been pointed out that 25-50 per cent of the reserved seats remain vacant for lack of qualified OBC candidates, resulting in a colossal waste of resources. This is true, but it is the result of sloppy and unplanned implementation.
The commission had laid great emphasis on creating suitable infrastructure in institutions to enable OBC candidates to derive full advantage from reservation. This required adequate planning and financial commitment. But as in 1990, the issue is again at present being treated purely as a vote-getting ploy.
The government is now dangling the carrot of proportionately increased seats in professional institutions to obviate any shrinkage in the 'merit' quota, as if the additional infrastructure can be created by waving a magic wand.
The current turmoil could have been averted if educationists had been taken into confidence, a sober assessment made of available capacities and a phased scheme of implementation prepared for a smooth transition.
The writer is a former bureaucrat. He was secretary, Mandal Commission.
S S GILL
In view of the confusion created by Mandal II, the Supreme Court has asked the government to clarify two things: One, what is the basis for determining who belongs to an OBC category; and two, the rationale behind 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. These two points need to be immediately cleared.
OBCs belong to the shudra category in the caste classification. Several people confuse shudras with Dalits (earlier known as untouchables). OBCs were supposed to be people who lived by their physical labour.
Though not treated as untouchables, they formed the largest segment of low castes and suffered from all sorts of social disabilities. That is why they qualify to be categorised as socially and educationally backward, and thus entitled to affirmative action under the Constitution.
As to their identification, the Mandal Commission undertook the biggest social survey ever attempted in this country. To begin with, an experts' panel under the chairmanship of eminent sociologist M N Srinivas and 14 other social scientists was formed to devise schedules for identification of OBCs.
Simultaneously, Delhi University held a seminar for a thorough discussion of the terms of reference of the commission. After several meetings, the experts' panel prepared four comprehensive schedules, two each for rural and urban areas.
All the state governments were sent these schedules for conducting the survey. Two villages and one urban block were selected at random in each and every district of the country, and all the residents of these areas were covered by the survey.
Questionnaires were also sent to all the states and 30 ministries of the central government, and notices published in national dailies and regional papers inviting public response.
The data thus collected was passed on to the National Informatics Centre, which analysed the information contained in the four pre-coded schedules.
The results of this analysis were used by the experts' panel, which derived 11 indicators of social, educational and economic backwardness. It was by the application of these indicators that OBCs were identified.
As to the number of OBCs and their percentage, government had stopped collecting caste-wise enumeration of population after the 1931 census.
Consequently, the population of various OBCs identified by the commission were culled from this census, and extrapola-ted on the basis of population growth trends over this period.
That is how the percentage of OBCs was arrived at, and it worked out to 52 per cent. When the 11 indicators were applied to identify OBCs, 44 per cent happened to be Hindus and 8 per cent were from other religions.
That shows how authentic the indicators were as it picked up a fair number of non-Hindus who were socially and educationally backward.
Some commentators have pointed out that the National Sample Survey Organisation's investigations show that OBCs constitute 32 per cent of the population, and National Family Health Survey places the figure at 30 per cent.
These two surveys cannot match the span and depth of Mandal Commission's investigations, and its findings can be revised only if an exercise of the same magnitude is attempted.
It has also been pointed out that 25-50 per cent of the reserved seats remain vacant for lack of qualified OBC candidates, resulting in a colossal waste of resources. This is true, but it is the result of sloppy and unplanned implementation.
The commission had laid great emphasis on creating suitable infrastructure in institutions to enable OBC candidates to derive full advantage from reservation. This required adequate planning and financial commitment. But as in 1990, the issue is again at present being treated purely as a vote-getting ploy.
The government is now dangling the carrot of proportionately increased seats in professional institutions to obviate any shrinkage in the 'merit' quota, as if the additional infrastructure can be created by waving a magic wand.
The current turmoil could have been averted if educationists had been taken into confidence, a sober assessment made of available capacities and a phased scheme of implementation prepared for a smooth transition.
The writer is a former bureaucrat. He was secretary, Mandal Commission.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Survey: Majority of Indians want quota
For those who love statistics over what they dismiss as mere ‘emotions’, well, here are the statistics.
The anti-quota protests dominated news headline for weeks, but were they the representative of the real mood of the nation? A CNN-IBN and The Indian Express survey conducted by A C Neilsen on the issue has come up with some startling facts.
The findings of the survey show that majority of Indians support reservations and feel that quotas in higher education will lead to equal opportunities.
According to the survey, 57 per cent Indians favour the Government’s decision on 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in higher education. Only 37 per cent feel otherwise.
Majority of the respondents feel that reservations in higher education are a key to social justice. As many as 63 per cent of the respondents said that reservations in higher education will lead to equal opportunity as against 34 per cent who felt that it will lead to loss of quality. [Go read the phull thing!]
Am I excited? You bet! This is the will of the people. Do you respect it?
The best part about the survey are the comments that page is getting. Look who’s talking media bias!
Jindal Shah: The poll is inherently biased and gives misleading information to the readers. If 65% participants are from SC/ST or OBC cateogories then it is hardly surprising that the polls conclusion favor the reservation policy. I sincerely think that this is waste of time, money and resources. So this is no way people’s verdict.
I do not think that the poll sample is unique and is not representative of the overall population statistics
Just one survey against the upper caste guys has now turned them against the media also. The same medium which they were praising for taking up their cause and fighting for them has come under questioning.
Basically, these guys are not willing to face the truth and the reality that there are vast sections of Indian people, who favour reservations.
Had this survey gone in the favour of anti-reservation lobby, they would have lapped it like anything.
What the medicos want is a skewed media which favours their agenda and supports them.
The anti-quota protests dominated news headline for weeks, but were they the representative of the real mood of the nation? A CNN-IBN and The Indian Express survey conducted by A C Neilsen on the issue has come up with some startling facts.
The findings of the survey show that majority of Indians support reservations and feel that quotas in higher education will lead to equal opportunities.
According to the survey, 57 per cent Indians favour the Government’s decision on 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in higher education. Only 37 per cent feel otherwise.
Majority of the respondents feel that reservations in higher education are a key to social justice. As many as 63 per cent of the respondents said that reservations in higher education will lead to equal opportunity as against 34 per cent who felt that it will lead to loss of quality. [Go read the phull thing!]
Am I excited? You bet! This is the will of the people. Do you respect it?
The best part about the survey are the comments that page is getting. Look who’s talking media bias!
Jindal Shah: The poll is inherently biased and gives misleading information to the readers. If 65% participants are from SC/ST or OBC cateogories then it is hardly surprising that the polls conclusion favor the reservation policy. I sincerely think that this is waste of time, money and resources. So this is no way people’s verdict.
I do not think that the poll sample is unique and is not representative of the overall population statistics
Just one survey against the upper caste guys has now turned them against the media also. The same medium which they were praising for taking up their cause and fighting for them has come under questioning.
Basically, these guys are not willing to face the truth and the reality that there are vast sections of Indian people, who favour reservations.
Had this survey gone in the favour of anti-reservation lobby, they would have lapped it like anything.
What the medicos want is a skewed media which favours their agenda and supports them.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Caste is supreme today
The strike against reservations has come to an end, and it revealed
interesting insights. Here are some of them:
Caste still divides India like nothing else. How else can you explain who so
many disparate groups got together to suddenly discover the concept of merit
and how letting in OBC students in would lower standards?
On the other side, caste also unites: it is amazing how all the so-called forward castes (this is a better word than the misplaced upper caste; I mean, how can some say they are above others!) got together to fight the OBCs. Not sure if anyone
noticed, but around the same time, one newspaper (or was it a website)
carried an ad for a matchmaking seminar for Brahmins, regardless of
subcaste.
Clearly, the times are a changing. Brahmins are ignoring subcastes
to marry within castes. But then, the more things change, the more they
remain the same too. Which means Brahmins are only marrying fellow Brahmins!
While the protesting medical students accuse Arjun Singh of being casteist,
they showed they are just as casteist (at least Arjun is on the side of the
dispossessed).
Or else why would the students insist on carrying on with the
strike after the PM assured them that the number of general seats would not
be reduced and also promised many more colleges? At this point the students
began demanding an end to ALL reservations.
But is that right? Can such
decisions be made on the streets and in the heat of a dispute? Worse, it
gave the impression that the forward caste students were not just against
quotas, but against the very rise of the backwards.
And in case students want us to believe that the reason they are protesting
against reservations per se is because they believe in merit, that has been
effectively answered by Udit Raj and his friends.
Because if you really believe in merit, then what about the private colleges that admit students with far lower marks and far more money to spend? What about NRI students who put in dollars where their marks should be? Is it because most
protesting students probably have a relative or a friend who has availed of
the private colleges after paying a handsome capitation fee (or horribly
high fees year after year).
After all, private colleges have actually benefited the paying middle class, most of who are from the forward castes.
There is another loophole in this merit-will-be-affected claim. Every Indian
is clearly aware that south India is far better off than north India on
almost all parameters of human development. Yet, south India has far more
reservations than north and has had them for years altogether. So clearly
reservations does not affect merit but actually helps a region prosper.
Infact, one can argue that if north India had put in better policies to help
its dispossessed (including reservations) earlier, it would not be the
blighted region that it currently is. And Bihar would not have had the
negative connotations it currently does!
This sounds like a Ripley's Believe it or not, but India with a population
of 1 billion, a majority of them young, is facing a shortage of manpower to
fuel its growth. Almost every sector is struggling to find people and this
shortage is raising costs, hurting India's core advantage (cheap labour). On
the other side, there are millions of uneducated (or little educated)
youngsters struggling to find decent jobs that can give them and their
families two square meals.
Why the paradox? Because our education system churns out only a few highly educated people; 90 per cent of the students enrolled at primary drop out, and end up with little skill to offer the marketplace.
Now, can India ever become a great power if so many Indians are not even decently educated to be a part of our booming economy? More important, do we deserve to be a great power when the nation's greatness benefits a few while millions languish?
interesting insights. Here are some of them:
Caste still divides India like nothing else. How else can you explain who so
many disparate groups got together to suddenly discover the concept of merit
and how letting in OBC students in would lower standards?
On the other side, caste also unites: it is amazing how all the so-called forward castes (this is a better word than the misplaced upper caste; I mean, how can some say they are above others!) got together to fight the OBCs. Not sure if anyone
noticed, but around the same time, one newspaper (or was it a website)
carried an ad for a matchmaking seminar for Brahmins, regardless of
subcaste.
Clearly, the times are a changing. Brahmins are ignoring subcastes
to marry within castes. But then, the more things change, the more they
remain the same too. Which means Brahmins are only marrying fellow Brahmins!
While the protesting medical students accuse Arjun Singh of being casteist,
they showed they are just as casteist (at least Arjun is on the side of the
dispossessed).
Or else why would the students insist on carrying on with the
strike after the PM assured them that the number of general seats would not
be reduced and also promised many more colleges? At this point the students
began demanding an end to ALL reservations.
But is that right? Can such
decisions be made on the streets and in the heat of a dispute? Worse, it
gave the impression that the forward caste students were not just against
quotas, but against the very rise of the backwards.
And in case students want us to believe that the reason they are protesting
against reservations per se is because they believe in merit, that has been
effectively answered by Udit Raj and his friends.
Because if you really believe in merit, then what about the private colleges that admit students with far lower marks and far more money to spend? What about NRI students who put in dollars where their marks should be? Is it because most
protesting students probably have a relative or a friend who has availed of
the private colleges after paying a handsome capitation fee (or horribly
high fees year after year).
After all, private colleges have actually benefited the paying middle class, most of who are from the forward castes.
There is another loophole in this merit-will-be-affected claim. Every Indian
is clearly aware that south India is far better off than north India on
almost all parameters of human development. Yet, south India has far more
reservations than north and has had them for years altogether. So clearly
reservations does not affect merit but actually helps a region prosper.
Infact, one can argue that if north India had put in better policies to help
its dispossessed (including reservations) earlier, it would not be the
blighted region that it currently is. And Bihar would not have had the
negative connotations it currently does!
This sounds like a Ripley's Believe it or not, but India with a population
of 1 billion, a majority of them young, is facing a shortage of manpower to
fuel its growth. Almost every sector is struggling to find people and this
shortage is raising costs, hurting India's core advantage (cheap labour). On
the other side, there are millions of uneducated (or little educated)
youngsters struggling to find decent jobs that can give them and their
families two square meals.
Why the paradox? Because our education system churns out only a few highly educated people; 90 per cent of the students enrolled at primary drop out, and end up with little skill to offer the marketplace.
Now, can India ever become a great power if so many Indians are not even decently educated to be a part of our booming economy? More important, do we deserve to be a great power when the nation's greatness benefits a few while millions languish?
Merit is the luxury of the privileged
There are linkages between the backward castes/classes and poverty, which are in turn intricately related to the education system
By Jitendra Kumar
Jitendra Kumar
For some time now, the mainstream media has been replete with only one news — "The students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are opposing reservation in all central institutions." All the medical colleges and the students of iit, Delhi have joined them. And on behalf of these "meritorious" and "patriotic" students, the upper caste-controlled media is fighting their "war". The agitation has spread all over the country. According to one news item, an event management company was organising the protest march in Mumbai (isn't it a brand new lesson for mass movements?) In the meantime there has been another news hogging news space — "The stock market is falling sharply." So from now on, only two categories of news would make headlines: anti-reservation protests and the stock market (because the market 'guides' our economy and 'merit' controls our country! Though it is quite a separate matter that only 2.5 percent people have investments in the stock market).
When we look into the protests in AIIMS and the iits and the publicity given to them by the media, it becomes clear that even today the number of dalits, obcs and minorities is insignificant in these institutions. If they had a presence there, why would there be such loud protests? Why would they protest against themselves? Second, even the media that has made this issue into such a huge thing, is monopolised by high castes. Then, shouldn't reservation be ensured for these deprived classes to ensure their presence out there?
These days by merely opening a newspaper, one gets the feeling that every common man has become a social scientist and each social scientist, a common man. Almost all the political commentators have begun criticising reservation on the grounds of loss of talent and the threat of 'brain drain'. The debate around merit gives one the idea that it is a sole preserve of a few castes and if it went to other castes, it will vanish. The reality is different. Chandrabhan Prasad has recently unravelled the myth behind the idea of 'merit'. He quotes the report of the Indian Universities Commission, 1902, according to which, in the matriculation examination of 1901, 19.2 percent students in Madras, 32.6 percent in Bombay, 53.9 percent in Calcutta, 35.2 percent in Allahabad, and 50.9 percent in Punjab had passed. If we look carefully at 'merit', it becomes clear that at that time only upper castes studied in universities because dalits and obcs were in no condition to access education. But the British government continued to give them patronage and the situation today is that they are in the seat of power.
Short-Sighted Visionaries: students protest against the 'compromise with merit'
Photo K. Satheesh
Protestors have shouted themselves hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that, at least, there is some minimum cut-off point for the SCs, STs and OBCs. There is no such minimum limit for the NRIs and those giving capitation fees
The second argument of anti-reservationists is that if reservation was given, a large-scale migration of talent will take place from these elite institutions. This is even more hilarious. Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain written by B. Khadria tells us that during 1956-1980 there was a continuous brain drain of students from AIIMS, Delhi and in 1980 it had reached up to 85 percent. The same is true for the iits. By 2001 at least 25,000 iitians were in the USA alone. Overall their presence reaches up to 34 percent.
The question then arises that if there was no reservation for obcs till now in these institutions and dalits' quota never got filled, then who were these 'bright young minds' leaving the country? Was it in the interest of the nation or were they moving out due to personal interests?
The matter is quite clear. Those high castes who aren't part of the power elite or don't have a direct stake in the power-sharing, have left this country. They have neither any love for their society and country nor for the labouring classes. Neither do they have any respect for them. Those 'talented' students who are protesting against reservation are showing this through either polishing shoes or by sweeping the streets. Doesn't this kind of regressive protest prove the kind of hatred they have against those performing these activities as regular jobs for centuries?
In 1990, when the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented in Central government jobs, these very people had argued that 'first make them capable enough by giving them education' and today when it is actually being implemented in education, they have crossed all barriers of ethics. Before the implementation of the Mandal Report, the elite of this country made fun of the Communists by saying that these guys didn't understand the multi-layered caste, class, religion-ridden reality of this country where any slogan of class-war would never be successful. But the day Mandal came into force, this same elite became Marxist overnight and began to say that there are only two classes in this society, rich and the poor. Never would you find in the pages of history such rapid socio-intellectual transformation of any society. But one shouldn't mistake this concern as their love for Marxism. The reality is that they hate both Marxism and Marxists, but this 'understanding' about the rich and the poor serves their interest and hence their 'spontaneous' understanding of Marxism. They have subverted the peace of this country by shouting hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that at least there is some minimum cut-off point for the scs, sts and obcs, but there is no such minimum limit for the nris and those giving capitation fees. Perhaps they don't want to know that in this very country the number of engineering aspirants getting admission through capitation fees is 1,50,000.
What is the socio-economic background of those 'extremely talented' students protesting against reservations? Most of them have passed out of English medium schools, belong to urban middle classes and are high castes. And what is the social composition of the Knowledge Commission appointed by the prime minister, which is egging them on? Sam Pitroda (Satyen Gangadhar Pitroda) heads this commission and has six out of eight members who are Brahmins and two others come from other high castes. (Check out the 'merit' here as well. This commission has not been founded on 'merit' but has been nominated by the pm. Isn't the same 'merit' principle working in the entire country?)
If people in our country are unable to see the gap between diwan-e-aam and diwan-e-khaas, then they should read the chapter on caste in the brilliant book Contemporary India written by the sociologist Satish Deshpande. He has factually analysed the condition of the scs, sts, obcs and Muslims in urban and rural India. According to him, more than 50 percent of sts in rural India are living below the poverty line (BPL) while 43 percent scs and 34 percent obcs fall under this category. Similarly, in urban India, the comparative figures for the scs and sts are 43 percent and for the obcs 36 percent respectively. According to the 2001 census, all these sections put together living under-BPL in urban India form 91 percent while in rural India they constitute 88 percent. This poverty is the main reason why 41.47 percent SC children in the fifth standard, 59.93 percent in the eighth and 71.92 percent in the tenth standard drop-out. While the respective figures for the ST children are 51.37 percent, 68.67 percent and 80.29 percent. (Source: goi reports, 2002-03).
Despite these facts, the so-called wise people of this country are against any concessions to be given to the poor, as they own the knowledge industry and power. They don't want to be impartial or they can't understand this in their panic-stricken state. This intellectual class is standing on a gradually melting snow and not real ground. These are the same intellectual classes, which were claiming that the roots of secularism are so deep in this country that there was no need to worry about communalism. And yet in 1992, Babri Masjid was demolished and within five years, communal forces came to power in the Centre. They also say that democracy has strengthened in India by now while the truth is that there has been a constant fall in the voting percentage over the years. Hence, the need for them is to come down to the ground level in order to understand the reality of India.
In the end, reservation is not only a means to find jobs but the first step towards power-sharing for the deprived. These classes have been denied their rights for years and hence they deserve it, otherwise there will be chaos. In the words of the Punjabi revolutionary poet of the 1970s, Avtar Singh Pash, Maine ticket kharidkar Aapke loktantra ka natak dekha hai Ab to mera preksha griha men baithkar Hai-hai karne aur chikhein marne ka Haq banta hai Aapne bhi ticket dete samay Takey tak ki chhut nahi di
Aur main bhi apni pasand ki baju pakad Gadde faad doonga Aur parde jala daalunga.
(I have bought the ticket And seen the play of your democracy Now I have a right to sit inside the auditorium And scream my lungs out shouting hai-hai You too never gave me any concession of even a penny while dispensing the ticket I, too, would find my favourite seat And tear the cushions apart And burn the curtains down.)
The writer, a journalist, is currently working on a book on VP SinghFor some time now, the mainstream media has been replete with only one news — "The students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are opposing reservation in all central institutions." All the medical colleges and the students of iit, Delhi have joined them. And on behalf of these "meritorious" and "patriotic" students, the upper caste-controlled media is fighting their "war". The agitation has spread all over the country.
According to one news item, an event management company was organising the protest march in Mumbai (isn't it a brand new lesson for mass movements?) In the meantime there has been another news hogging news space — "The stock market is falling sharply." So from now on, only two categories of news would make headlines: anti-reservation protests and the stock market (because the market 'guides' our economy and 'merit' controls our country! Though it is quite a separate matter that only 2.5 percent people have investments in the stock market).
When we look into the protests in AIIMS and the iits and the publicity given to them by the media, it becomes clear that even today the number of dalits, obcs and minorities is insignificant in these institutions. If they had a presence there, why would there be such loud protests? Why would they protest against themselves? Second, even the media that has made this issue into such a huge thing, is monopolised by high castes. Then, shouldn't reservation be ensured for these deprived classes to ensure their presence out there?
These days by merely opening a newspaper, one gets the feeling that every common man has become a social scientist and each social scientist, a common man. Almost all the political commentators have begun criticising reservation on the grounds of loss of talent and the threat of 'brain drain'. The debate around merit gives one the idea that it is a sole preserve of a few castes and if it went to other castes, it will vanish. The reality is different. Chandrabhan Prasad has recently unravelled the myth behind the idea of 'merit'. He quotes the report of the Indian Universities Commission, 1902, according to which, in the matriculation examination of 1901, 19.2 percent students in Madras, 32.6 percent in Bombay, 53.9 percent in Calcutta, 35.2 percent in Allahabad, and 50.9 percent in Punjab had passed. If we look carefully at 'merit', it becomes clear that at that time only upper castes studied in universities because dalits and obcs were in no condition to access education. But the British government continued to give them patronage and the situation today is that they are in the seat of power.
The second argument of anti-reservationists is that if reservation was given, a large-scale migration of talent will take place from these elite institutions. This is even more hilarious. Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain written by B. Khadria tells us that during 1956-1980 there was a continuous brain drain of students from AIIMS, Delhi and in 1980 it had reached up to 85 percent. The same is true for the iits. By 2001 at least 25,000 iitians were in the USA alone. Overall their presence reaches up to 34 percent.
The question then arises that if there was no reservation for obcs till now in these institutions and dalits' quota never got filled, then who were these 'bright young minds' leaving the country? Was it in the interest of the nation or were they moving out due to personal interests?
The matter is quite clear. Those high castes who aren't part of the power elite or don't have a direct stake in the power-sharing, have left this country. They have neither any love for their society and country nor for the labouring classes. Neither do they have any respect for them. Those 'talented' students who are protesting against reservation are showing this through either polishing shoes or by sweeping the streets. Doesn't this kind of regressive protest prove the kind of hatred they have against those performing these activities as regular jobs for centuries?
In 1990, when the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented in Central government jobs, these very people had argued that 'first make them capable enough by giving them education' and today when it is actually being implemented in education, they have crossed all barriers of ethics. Before the implementation of the Mandal Report, the elite of this country made fun of the Communists by saying that these guys didn't understand the multi-layered caste, class, religion-ridden reality of this country where any slogan of class-war would never be successful. But the day Mandal came into force, this same elite became Marxist overnight and began to say that there are only two classes in this society, rich and the poor. Never would you find in the pages of history such rapid socio-intellectual transformation of any society. But one shouldn't mistake this concern as their love for Marxism. The reality is that they hate both Marxism and Marxists, but this 'understanding' about the rich and the poor serves their interest and hence their 'spontaneous' understanding of Marxism. They have subverted the peace of this country by shouting hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that at least there is some minimum cut-off point for the scs, sts and obcs, but there is no such minimum limit for the nris and those giving capitation fees. Perhaps they don't want to know that in this very country the number of engineering aspirants getting admission through capitation fees is 1,50,000.
What is the socio-economic background of those 'extremely talented' students protesting against reservations? Most of them have passed out of English medium schools, belong to urban middle classes and are high castes. And what is the social composition of the Knowledge Commission appointed by the prime minister, which is egging them on? Sam Pitroda (Satyen Gangadhar Pitroda) heads this commission and has six out of eight members who are Brahmins and two others come from other high castes. (Check out the 'merit' here as well. This commission has not been founded on 'merit' but has been nominated by the pm. Isn't the same 'merit' principle working in the entire country?)
If people in our country are unable to see the gap between diwan-e-aam and diwan-e-khaas, then they should read the chapter on caste in the brilliant book Contemporary India written by the sociologist Satish Deshpande. He has factually analysed the condition of the scs, sts, obcs and Muslims in urban and rural India. According to him, more than 50 percent of STs in rural India are living below the poverty line (BPL) while 43 percent scs and 34 percent obcs fall under this category. Similarly, in urban India, the comparative figures for the scs and STs are 43 percent and for the obcs 36 percent respectively. According to the 2001 census, all these sections put together living under-BPL in urban India form 91 percent while in rural India they constitute 88 percent. This poverty is the main reason why 41.47 percent sc children in the fifth standard, 59.93 percent in the eighth and 71.92 percent in the tenth standard drop-out. While the respective figures for the ST children are 51.37 percent, 68.67 percent and 80.29 percent. (Source: goi reports, 2002-03).
Despite these facts, the so-called wise people of this country are against any concessions to be given to the poor, as they own the knowledge industry and power. They don't want to be impartial or they can't understand this in their panic-stricken state. This intellectual class is standing on a gradually melting snow and not real ground. These are the same intellectual classes, which were claiming that the roots of secularism are so deep in this country that there was no need to worry about communalism. And yet in 1992, Babri Masjid was demolished and within five years, communal forces came to power in the Centre. They also say that democracy has strengthened in India by now while the truth is that there has been a constant fall in the voting percentage over the years. Hence, the need for them is to come down to the ground level in order to understand the reality of India.
In the end, reservation is not only a means to find jobs but the first step towards power-sharing for the deprived. These classes have been denied their rights for years and hence they deserve it, otherwise there will be chaos. In the words of the Punjabi revolutionary poet of the 1970s, Avtar Singh Pash, Maine ticket kharidkar
Aapke loktantra ka natak dekha hai
Ab to mera preksha griha men baithkar
Hai-hai karne aur chikhein marne ka
Haq banta hai
Aapne bhi ticket dete samay
Takey tak ki chhut nahi di
Aur main bhi apni pasand ki baju pakad
Gadde faad doonga
Aur parde jala daalunga.
(I have bought the ticket And seen the play of your democracy Now I have a right to sit inside the auditorium And scream my lungs out shouting hai-hai You too never gave me any concession of even a penny while dispensing the ticket I, too, would find my favourite seat And tear the cushions apart And burn the curtains down.)
The writer, a journalist, is currently working on a book on VP Singh
By Jitendra Kumar
Jitendra Kumar
For some time now, the mainstream media has been replete with only one news — "The students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are opposing reservation in all central institutions." All the medical colleges and the students of iit, Delhi have joined them. And on behalf of these "meritorious" and "patriotic" students, the upper caste-controlled media is fighting their "war". The agitation has spread all over the country. According to one news item, an event management company was organising the protest march in Mumbai (isn't it a brand new lesson for mass movements?) In the meantime there has been another news hogging news space — "The stock market is falling sharply." So from now on, only two categories of news would make headlines: anti-reservation protests and the stock market (because the market 'guides' our economy and 'merit' controls our country! Though it is quite a separate matter that only 2.5 percent people have investments in the stock market).
When we look into the protests in AIIMS and the iits and the publicity given to them by the media, it becomes clear that even today the number of dalits, obcs and minorities is insignificant in these institutions. If they had a presence there, why would there be such loud protests? Why would they protest against themselves? Second, even the media that has made this issue into such a huge thing, is monopolised by high castes. Then, shouldn't reservation be ensured for these deprived classes to ensure their presence out there?
These days by merely opening a newspaper, one gets the feeling that every common man has become a social scientist and each social scientist, a common man. Almost all the political commentators have begun criticising reservation on the grounds of loss of talent and the threat of 'brain drain'. The debate around merit gives one the idea that it is a sole preserve of a few castes and if it went to other castes, it will vanish. The reality is different. Chandrabhan Prasad has recently unravelled the myth behind the idea of 'merit'. He quotes the report of the Indian Universities Commission, 1902, according to which, in the matriculation examination of 1901, 19.2 percent students in Madras, 32.6 percent in Bombay, 53.9 percent in Calcutta, 35.2 percent in Allahabad, and 50.9 percent in Punjab had passed. If we look carefully at 'merit', it becomes clear that at that time only upper castes studied in universities because dalits and obcs were in no condition to access education. But the British government continued to give them patronage and the situation today is that they are in the seat of power.
Short-Sighted Visionaries: students protest against the 'compromise with merit'
Photo K. Satheesh
Protestors have shouted themselves hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that, at least, there is some minimum cut-off point for the SCs, STs and OBCs. There is no such minimum limit for the NRIs and those giving capitation fees
The second argument of anti-reservationists is that if reservation was given, a large-scale migration of talent will take place from these elite institutions. This is even more hilarious. Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain written by B. Khadria tells us that during 1956-1980 there was a continuous brain drain of students from AIIMS, Delhi and in 1980 it had reached up to 85 percent. The same is true for the iits. By 2001 at least 25,000 iitians were in the USA alone. Overall their presence reaches up to 34 percent.
The question then arises that if there was no reservation for obcs till now in these institutions and dalits' quota never got filled, then who were these 'bright young minds' leaving the country? Was it in the interest of the nation or were they moving out due to personal interests?
The matter is quite clear. Those high castes who aren't part of the power elite or don't have a direct stake in the power-sharing, have left this country. They have neither any love for their society and country nor for the labouring classes. Neither do they have any respect for them. Those 'talented' students who are protesting against reservation are showing this through either polishing shoes or by sweeping the streets. Doesn't this kind of regressive protest prove the kind of hatred they have against those performing these activities as regular jobs for centuries?
In 1990, when the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented in Central government jobs, these very people had argued that 'first make them capable enough by giving them education' and today when it is actually being implemented in education, they have crossed all barriers of ethics. Before the implementation of the Mandal Report, the elite of this country made fun of the Communists by saying that these guys didn't understand the multi-layered caste, class, religion-ridden reality of this country where any slogan of class-war would never be successful. But the day Mandal came into force, this same elite became Marxist overnight and began to say that there are only two classes in this society, rich and the poor. Never would you find in the pages of history such rapid socio-intellectual transformation of any society. But one shouldn't mistake this concern as their love for Marxism. The reality is that they hate both Marxism and Marxists, but this 'understanding' about the rich and the poor serves their interest and hence their 'spontaneous' understanding of Marxism. They have subverted the peace of this country by shouting hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that at least there is some minimum cut-off point for the scs, sts and obcs, but there is no such minimum limit for the nris and those giving capitation fees. Perhaps they don't want to know that in this very country the number of engineering aspirants getting admission through capitation fees is 1,50,000.
What is the socio-economic background of those 'extremely talented' students protesting against reservations? Most of them have passed out of English medium schools, belong to urban middle classes and are high castes. And what is the social composition of the Knowledge Commission appointed by the prime minister, which is egging them on? Sam Pitroda (Satyen Gangadhar Pitroda) heads this commission and has six out of eight members who are Brahmins and two others come from other high castes. (Check out the 'merit' here as well. This commission has not been founded on 'merit' but has been nominated by the pm. Isn't the same 'merit' principle working in the entire country?)
If people in our country are unable to see the gap between diwan-e-aam and diwan-e-khaas, then they should read the chapter on caste in the brilliant book Contemporary India written by the sociologist Satish Deshpande. He has factually analysed the condition of the scs, sts, obcs and Muslims in urban and rural India. According to him, more than 50 percent of sts in rural India are living below the poverty line (BPL) while 43 percent scs and 34 percent obcs fall under this category. Similarly, in urban India, the comparative figures for the scs and sts are 43 percent and for the obcs 36 percent respectively. According to the 2001 census, all these sections put together living under-BPL in urban India form 91 percent while in rural India they constitute 88 percent. This poverty is the main reason why 41.47 percent SC children in the fifth standard, 59.93 percent in the eighth and 71.92 percent in the tenth standard drop-out. While the respective figures for the ST children are 51.37 percent, 68.67 percent and 80.29 percent. (Source: goi reports, 2002-03).
Despite these facts, the so-called wise people of this country are against any concessions to be given to the poor, as they own the knowledge industry and power. They don't want to be impartial or they can't understand this in their panic-stricken state. This intellectual class is standing on a gradually melting snow and not real ground. These are the same intellectual classes, which were claiming that the roots of secularism are so deep in this country that there was no need to worry about communalism. And yet in 1992, Babri Masjid was demolished and within five years, communal forces came to power in the Centre. They also say that democracy has strengthened in India by now while the truth is that there has been a constant fall in the voting percentage over the years. Hence, the need for them is to come down to the ground level in order to understand the reality of India.
In the end, reservation is not only a means to find jobs but the first step towards power-sharing for the deprived. These classes have been denied their rights for years and hence they deserve it, otherwise there will be chaos. In the words of the Punjabi revolutionary poet of the 1970s, Avtar Singh Pash, Maine ticket kharidkar Aapke loktantra ka natak dekha hai Ab to mera preksha griha men baithkar Hai-hai karne aur chikhein marne ka Haq banta hai Aapne bhi ticket dete samay Takey tak ki chhut nahi di
Aur main bhi apni pasand ki baju pakad Gadde faad doonga Aur parde jala daalunga.
(I have bought the ticket And seen the play of your democracy Now I have a right to sit inside the auditorium And scream my lungs out shouting hai-hai You too never gave me any concession of even a penny while dispensing the ticket I, too, would find my favourite seat And tear the cushions apart And burn the curtains down.)
The writer, a journalist, is currently working on a book on VP SinghFor some time now, the mainstream media has been replete with only one news — "The students of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are opposing reservation in all central institutions." All the medical colleges and the students of iit, Delhi have joined them. And on behalf of these "meritorious" and "patriotic" students, the upper caste-controlled media is fighting their "war". The agitation has spread all over the country.
According to one news item, an event management company was organising the protest march in Mumbai (isn't it a brand new lesson for mass movements?) In the meantime there has been another news hogging news space — "The stock market is falling sharply." So from now on, only two categories of news would make headlines: anti-reservation protests and the stock market (because the market 'guides' our economy and 'merit' controls our country! Though it is quite a separate matter that only 2.5 percent people have investments in the stock market).
When we look into the protests in AIIMS and the iits and the publicity given to them by the media, it becomes clear that even today the number of dalits, obcs and minorities is insignificant in these institutions. If they had a presence there, why would there be such loud protests? Why would they protest against themselves? Second, even the media that has made this issue into such a huge thing, is monopolised by high castes. Then, shouldn't reservation be ensured for these deprived classes to ensure their presence out there?
These days by merely opening a newspaper, one gets the feeling that every common man has become a social scientist and each social scientist, a common man. Almost all the political commentators have begun criticising reservation on the grounds of loss of talent and the threat of 'brain drain'. The debate around merit gives one the idea that it is a sole preserve of a few castes and if it went to other castes, it will vanish. The reality is different. Chandrabhan Prasad has recently unravelled the myth behind the idea of 'merit'. He quotes the report of the Indian Universities Commission, 1902, according to which, in the matriculation examination of 1901, 19.2 percent students in Madras, 32.6 percent in Bombay, 53.9 percent in Calcutta, 35.2 percent in Allahabad, and 50.9 percent in Punjab had passed. If we look carefully at 'merit', it becomes clear that at that time only upper castes studied in universities because dalits and obcs were in no condition to access education. But the British government continued to give them patronage and the situation today is that they are in the seat of power.
The second argument of anti-reservationists is that if reservation was given, a large-scale migration of talent will take place from these elite institutions. This is even more hilarious. Migration of Knowledge Workers: Second Generation Effects of India's Brain Drain written by B. Khadria tells us that during 1956-1980 there was a continuous brain drain of students from AIIMS, Delhi and in 1980 it had reached up to 85 percent. The same is true for the iits. By 2001 at least 25,000 iitians were in the USA alone. Overall their presence reaches up to 34 percent.
The question then arises that if there was no reservation for obcs till now in these institutions and dalits' quota never got filled, then who were these 'bright young minds' leaving the country? Was it in the interest of the nation or were they moving out due to personal interests?
The matter is quite clear. Those high castes who aren't part of the power elite or don't have a direct stake in the power-sharing, have left this country. They have neither any love for their society and country nor for the labouring classes. Neither do they have any respect for them. Those 'talented' students who are protesting against reservation are showing this through either polishing shoes or by sweeping the streets. Doesn't this kind of regressive protest prove the kind of hatred they have against those performing these activities as regular jobs for centuries?
In 1990, when the Mandal Commission recommendations were implemented in Central government jobs, these very people had argued that 'first make them capable enough by giving them education' and today when it is actually being implemented in education, they have crossed all barriers of ethics. Before the implementation of the Mandal Report, the elite of this country made fun of the Communists by saying that these guys didn't understand the multi-layered caste, class, religion-ridden reality of this country where any slogan of class-war would never be successful. But the day Mandal came into force, this same elite became Marxist overnight and began to say that there are only two classes in this society, rich and the poor. Never would you find in the pages of history such rapid socio-intellectual transformation of any society. But one shouldn't mistake this concern as their love for Marxism. The reality is that they hate both Marxism and Marxists, but this 'understanding' about the rich and the poor serves their interest and hence their 'spontaneous' understanding of Marxism. They have subverted the peace of this country by shouting hoarse about 'merit' but they don't bother to remember that at least there is some minimum cut-off point for the scs, sts and obcs, but there is no such minimum limit for the nris and those giving capitation fees. Perhaps they don't want to know that in this very country the number of engineering aspirants getting admission through capitation fees is 1,50,000.
What is the socio-economic background of those 'extremely talented' students protesting against reservations? Most of them have passed out of English medium schools, belong to urban middle classes and are high castes. And what is the social composition of the Knowledge Commission appointed by the prime minister, which is egging them on? Sam Pitroda (Satyen Gangadhar Pitroda) heads this commission and has six out of eight members who are Brahmins and two others come from other high castes. (Check out the 'merit' here as well. This commission has not been founded on 'merit' but has been nominated by the pm. Isn't the same 'merit' principle working in the entire country?)
If people in our country are unable to see the gap between diwan-e-aam and diwan-e-khaas, then they should read the chapter on caste in the brilliant book Contemporary India written by the sociologist Satish Deshpande. He has factually analysed the condition of the scs, sts, obcs and Muslims in urban and rural India. According to him, more than 50 percent of STs in rural India are living below the poverty line (BPL) while 43 percent scs and 34 percent obcs fall under this category. Similarly, in urban India, the comparative figures for the scs and STs are 43 percent and for the obcs 36 percent respectively. According to the 2001 census, all these sections put together living under-BPL in urban India form 91 percent while in rural India they constitute 88 percent. This poverty is the main reason why 41.47 percent sc children in the fifth standard, 59.93 percent in the eighth and 71.92 percent in the tenth standard drop-out. While the respective figures for the ST children are 51.37 percent, 68.67 percent and 80.29 percent. (Source: goi reports, 2002-03).
Despite these facts, the so-called wise people of this country are against any concessions to be given to the poor, as they own the knowledge industry and power. They don't want to be impartial or they can't understand this in their panic-stricken state. This intellectual class is standing on a gradually melting snow and not real ground. These are the same intellectual classes, which were claiming that the roots of secularism are so deep in this country that there was no need to worry about communalism. And yet in 1992, Babri Masjid was demolished and within five years, communal forces came to power in the Centre. They also say that democracy has strengthened in India by now while the truth is that there has been a constant fall in the voting percentage over the years. Hence, the need for them is to come down to the ground level in order to understand the reality of India.
In the end, reservation is not only a means to find jobs but the first step towards power-sharing for the deprived. These classes have been denied their rights for years and hence they deserve it, otherwise there will be chaos. In the words of the Punjabi revolutionary poet of the 1970s, Avtar Singh Pash, Maine ticket kharidkar
Aapke loktantra ka natak dekha hai
Ab to mera preksha griha men baithkar
Hai-hai karne aur chikhein marne ka
Haq banta hai
Aapne bhi ticket dete samay
Takey tak ki chhut nahi di
Aur main bhi apni pasand ki baju pakad
Gadde faad doonga
Aur parde jala daalunga.
(I have bought the ticket And seen the play of your democracy Now I have a right to sit inside the auditorium And scream my lungs out shouting hai-hai You too never gave me any concession of even a penny while dispensing the ticket I, too, would find my favourite seat And tear the cushions apart And burn the curtains down.)
The writer, a journalist, is currently working on a book on VP Singh
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