The Hindu Business Line : <I>Unending controversy </I>

The controversy over legalised reservations for backward classes in higher education is unlikely to go away anytime soon. It is too emotion-charged to allow fact-based debate. There are such implied vested interests on all three sides — the beneficiary, those aggrieved and the political elements in support of the increase — that all objective protest is bound to fall on deaf ears. The stake for the nation meanwhile is the imperative to increase the quality of doctors, school teachers, lawyers, engineers, administrators and managers of our growing and thriving economy, in short order.

True dialogue

This sense of urgency is, however, not seen in the debate at all. If we want good sense, reason and civilised behaviour to prevail, this situation calls for a true dialogue. And that means participants must consciously re-examine their baggage of old inherited prejudices, grudges and conclusions that they bring to the table. A simple way of doing this is to start with defining the issue, agreeing on those things we can agree upon as common goals and facts.

But what are such incontrovertible facts? For example: Indian society exhibits great disparity even at birth, in terms of access to opportunity. This disparity can never be denied and is only partially a matter of community or religion. Often, it is far more a matter of being born in a city, to a good family, and therefore to power and influence. Differential ability and aptitude is yet another matter that cannot be brushed aside.

Standards of excellence

All any society can ensure is access, performance will always vary over a lifetime among classmates identically trained. All right-thinking people must grant the need for the highest standards of excellence among surgeons, technologists, professionals and many other specialised professions (from computer software to nano-technology, advanced research in physics or aviation and rocket design) has to be admitted by. In today's world economic environment, of which India is emerging a great potential participant, not to do so would be suicidal. If one concedes these points, then sanity demands that we must resolve to never officially and deliberately lower standards of entry and (God forbid) graduation at the institutions that train these professions.

The intended outcome surely cannot be that the social wrongs can be somehow righted in one generation and that too by hook or by crook — enabling less able to be qualified. The politicians who do not concede this must honestly answer the question whether they would like themselves or their families to be treated, by preference, by a surgeon who barely scraped through the exam; or would insist on flying on only those airlines that are commanded by the less competent and more error-prone pilots! Please note this has nothing to do with the caste-based reservation. Would anyone willingly want standards lowered?

Maintaining quality

If a Minister or MP fell seriously ill, the chances are they would scour the world for the best-qualified and reputed surgeon and not for his caste certificate. When the house is on fire, would you look at the colour of the skin of the man who brings water? For an emerging economy, the quality of its teachers across all crucial disciplines as well as in high schools is the real investment for the future. Maintaining the quality of intake and criteria for acquiring the diploma are survival needs of Indian society.

(Feedback can be sent to srchander23@netscape.net)

S. Ramachander

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