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