Whose Media?

Thanks, Satya for sending this out (in response to an earlier blog entry on reservation policy in India! It was written for “Indian Manifesto” mailing list at UMass., Amherst.

Dear All,
1) Firstly, reservation is NOT the solution.The solutions are universal education including higher education and jobs for all.
Reservation is nothing but a futile effort at managing the extreme contradictions of our society. Some of these contradictions are

i) the gap between job seekers and the number of available jobs, ii) the gap between the small minority educated in English and thus able to pursue higher education in India and abroad and the vast majority of illiterate or inadequately educated people, iii)the great disparity between regional development (Bihar and Orissa with the greatest mineral wealth of the country are also the poorest states) and iv) the contradiction between modern development projects like the proposed steel factory (touted as the largest FDI in Indian history) In Orissa or the Narmada Dam and dislocation and dispossession of thousands of the tribal population. These are irreconcilable contradictions of the Indian society,which can only be resolved thru revolutionary transformation of the society. No extent of reservation will be able to solve these contradictions.

2) Having said this, let us be clear. We are not opposed to reservation. Consider a situation where there are 5 seats and there are 20 applicants of which 5 are general category student and 15 are lower castes. with current reservation let’s say one or two seats will go to the lower castes. and with increased reservation 3 will go to the lower castes. With the proposed change in reservation, the general caste will loose and lower class will gain. Now the anti-reservationists and the pro-reservationists fight over these numbers and over the relative distribution of the pie. What escapes notice is the fact that the size of the pie has not increased. There were still 15 persons who didn’t get admission before and after reservation. (Think of employment in India. In fact, employment in public sector and big private sectors has been decreasing in the last decades.) For us, the solution is to increase the size of the pie to 20 so that everyone gets the opportunity to prove himself or herself.
However, we strongly assert that whatever gains accrue to the lower castes due to reservations are still welcome since they have been the most marginalised and under privileged sections of the society for a long time. India has a negative image in the rest of the world as sustaining and reproducing one of the most infamous systems of social hierarchy , i.e. the caste system, (possibly only second to slavery in notoriety). Those who are claiming that india is emerging as a serious global player, as the IIT professor does, they should support such affirmative action policies. And we should also be proud that India, even though a third world country, initiated and runs one of the biggest affirmative action policies of the world.

3) For those (”meritorious”) students who arrive at the USA via IITs or other elite institutions in India, and who end up serving the USA corporations, we can understand why they are concerned about the meritocracy and maintaining standards in IIT education. Because their migration to the USA will be negatively affected if what they fear comes true. While the rest of the world sends its working class to the USA, India sends its trained man power to the USA. IITs majorly benefited global corporate power, not India. The US congress rightly celebrates IITs because they got these scientific personnel from India without incurring any cost. The Indians foolishly celebrate the IITs and hence the subsidization of the US corporations by poor Indian population. Most of the tax revenue of the government come from Sales tax, which means that the rich and the poor pay the same tax irrespective of the difference in their income. This is considered a very “regressive” tax system which shifts the burden of tax disproportionately on to the poor. So basically the poor people,i.e. the overwhelming majority of India’s population, subsidises elite Intuitions like IITs which then serve global corporate interests. This is a perverse outcome which should sicken every sensible person. If now, the lower castes, who constitute the majority of the poor people, achieve a higher proportion of the seats at IITs and other elite institutions, it is their RIGHT– not the sacrifice of the general castes. Quite contrary, the lower castes have been sacrificing for too long.

The higher castes who are worried about their declining share of seats in the IITs, would better demand more IITs from the government rather than signing anti-reservation petitions. The State of California itself has more IIT-like institutions (in fact better than IITs ) than whole of India. This also relates to our point made in 2) that the solution is to increase the size of the pie. (We are skeptic, though, about the possible benefits to India from more IITs, given the “brain drain” to the West.)

4) “Meritocracy” and “standards of education” are non-issues unless people don’t want to talk about the really serious issues. If there are 5 seats for 20 applicants some people HAVE to be screened out. That’s when we set up unnecessarily difficult entrance exams just to screen out people, to stamp people with the “failed” label and get rid of our responsibility. The point is not that they are “incapable” The point is that we have nothing to offer to “capable” people. So, we restrict the size of “capable” people. It serves the purpose of politicians, business and government to produce as many “failed”or “incapable” people as possible so that they can hide the real cause of such “incapabilities”–the lack of adequate opportunities. Capability is produced thru social institutions. In India the social institutions produce the opposite. An education system that designates such a huge percentage of population as “incapable” is either itself a machinery to produce “incapability” or an incredibly incapable institution of producing “capable” people.
Those who have teaching experience in the USA universities know how the vast majority of the dumb, crazy, party going undergrads are taken thru an education system (literally pampered) which then make them fit enough to participate in the most technologically sophisticated economy. Let America have a pathetic number of 6 IITs as in India and overnight there will emerge in the USA a vast “lower castes” of incapable people who lack “merit”.

5) The article by the IIT professor which has been circulated and read by the members of the email group illustrates, how mediocre IIT intellectuals are. Any person with minimum cerebral maturity would laugh at the silliness of the arguments/ claims presented in the article. One example is enough. If India with a population of one billion cannot secure more than one medal at the alternate Olympics then it is obvious that the whole system has gone wrong, and therefore the whole system should be reviewed and drastically changed unless we are comfortable with the image of the solitary bronze winner from India standing awkwardly among the winners of the world. Isn’t it the obvious conclusion?
Why does the meritorious professor from the IIT cannot see it? Given the total failure of the sports administration in India, why does the professor worry about the reservation in the sports administration? Of course, the highly IIT-ised brain could not think of radical
solutions that would otherwise seem very obvious.

Finally in response to all the noise and uproar created by the upper castes in India against reservation, we want to say –One CANNOT reverse the arrow of time. In the last two decades, the lower castes are on the move and have been more influential than ever before, in determining national politics, distribution of power and resources, redefining culture, and the very texture of everyday life. That’s the greatest thing that has happened to India in the recent past. In fact,it is a more significant event in the history of Indian than even the independence struggle. Formal independence in 1947 transferred power to an elite Indian upper class with a thoroughly “colonised” mind. The rise of the lower caste movements has led to the “Indianization” of Indian politics and hence the emergence of a more meaningful and mature democracy.

Very soon, the anti-reservation protests and uproar of the upper castes In India will be nothing more than the cry of the lone wolf in the jungle that bemoans the loss of its chunk of meat.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION !!!!

Satya and Rajesh