The Hindu Business Line : <I>Very serious reservations </I>

However one looks at it, the new move to reserve half the seats in advanced learning institutions on the basis of caste, within a limited supply and high demand environment is bound to cause chaos. Instead of focussing on public and private partnership in building this crucial social foundation of education, beginning with the school level, this will simply chuck a spanner in the works.

Can we afford it?

Certainly, India's greatest advantage in human resource, which is high quality hard work, sharp intelligence, tradition of flexible learning and so on, will suffer. Since the total intake into institutions such as the IITs and IIMs cannot be increased overnight, any quota which implies relaxing the entry-level requirements must forcibly reduce the average standards. This is an arithmetical truth. Whether we can as a country afford it, more so at this take off stage that we have been waiting for since the mid-20th century, is the obvious next question. Sadly, some people in the country's highest decision-making body seem to think we can.

India is not merely the flavour of the season for investments by overseas funds. It is the destination of choice for most Western corporations in the continent that holds the most promise for the next 50 years. Despite the far superior strengths of China on many counts, India is preferred for its values and systems in education, legislation, justice, governance and market organisation that are closer to the Western economies.

Cautious starters

India is also probably the most important melting pot of ideas, a test-bed for scientific, social or technological innovation, with the potential to apply it to growing markets elsewhere in the world. It is also a source of quality manpower and services — again not the best in the world maybe, but unrivalled value for money. Otherwise Intel, IBM, GE and Microsoft would not come here and expand their involvement.

These mega corporations have indeed been cautious starters. The only thing that gave them pause was not even our notorious bureaucracy, corruption and infrastructure — but the inexplicable inconsistencies — between avowed policy and action, promise and performance. For long, the doubt was whether how long the enthusiasm for free market policies and integrating with world markets would last. After 15 years, one could say we have stayed the course, amidst a cacophony of voices claiming diametrically opposed views.

Short-sightedness

It is remarkable that it is the same country which taxed punitively and throttled investments by those capable of making them. And where a factory producing more than it was licensed to, with smarter manufacturing and productivity, invited a reprimand. We now look back and regret that we did not jettison these policies earlier. One day it might well be that we shall look back and realise how we squandered away our only advantage — that of brainpower, by short-sighted and emotionally-charged attitude to creating a meritocracy. By then, two generations will have been lost to the world.

Given the size, low absolute levels of incomes, and diversity, we are trying admittedly hugely difficult tasks never attempted simultaneously — to create prosperity and harmony through democratic and secular institutions within a modern, information society based on economic freedoms. We must not throw this away by destroying the foundations of our future, which is the education of the half a billion young minds.

S. Ramachander

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