Defining image

For me, the defining image of the week was Sagarika Ghose of IBN-Live crying out : ' Isn't there a single politician in the country who would speak for all sections of society?'

Like the media in the country is speaking out for 'all' sections of society, Ms.Ghose?

Ask Nafisa Ali..

"If there are no reservations at all....
Is there anything in the indian constitution stopping anyone, belonging to any cast or creed, from getting higher education, if he/she is intelligent and qualified enough for it ??"

I noticed this query elsewhere on the net - I agree with the commenter : there is nothing in the Indian Constitution, if there are no reservations, that'd stop intelligent and qualified people.

So, what's stopping some ? We demand the government to appoint an apolitical commission comprising Navjot Singh Sidhu, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and...

Manudal

It has been said before.. but it looks like it has to be said again and again.. and a million times and more for it to sink into the minds of those finding excuses for this fight for 'equality' , that Manu was the original Mandal, that the majority of those working in/running the 'inefficient', 'incompetent' 'deficient-in-merit' Indian bureaucracy and public sector and organised industry are/were Manu's favorite children. And the backward classes? Until 1990 you could attribute less than 4% of this 'inefficiency' to them. Read on:
'It needs to be borne in mind that this large group of OBCs, who constitute close to 60 per cent of the population, had a negligible presence of about 4 per cent in government employment when these recommendations were implemented. Also worth bearing in mind is the fact that even this small representation in employment was restricted to the lower rungs of government jobs. In other words, the overwhelming majority of public services were monopolised by the small crust of upper castes. In one estimation made by sociologist Satish Deshpande, about 20 per cent of the population controlled about 95 per cent of all jobs. Deshpande has also recently calculated the poverty-caste relationship on the basis of the National Sample Survey Organisation consumption data which confirm the strong relationship between low-caste status and poverty. However, what is relevant here is not merely the incidence of poverty among different 'backward' caste groups but more importantly, the fact that even among the relatively better-off and educated sections of Dalits (the Untouchable castes) and OBCs, access to public employment, especially at the higher levels, is severely restricted. In other words, as Ram Naresh Kushwaha, an OBC parliamentarian had put it in a parliament debate in 1978, the upper castes have always had informal reservations operating for them in employment; jobs were reserved for them. Manusmriti itself, he had claimed, was nothing other than a reservation of certain jobs for only a certain category of people.'

Link, thanks to We-Support-Reservations.

The Bare Truth

Sidharth, thanks for telling us the 'bare' truth about what you think of 'democracy'. Thanks for revealing all about your idea of 'equality'. Congratulations on seeing through your comrades' 'nautanki'!

The Scavenger's Drum

Three days ago, I watch a television reporter stting on her haunches, patiently giving us a ground report on the day's events at the battlefield, AIIMS. No, she's not giving us an account of the body count inside the hospital but the 'determination and unmitigated commitment' of the striking medicos outside, in a tent. Despite the 'stubborn' attitude of the government and the refusal of the Prime Minister (don't you find that puzzling, dear viewer? shame on you for thinking the Prime Minister is not a tehsildar!) to come and talk to them.. It's now the turn of one of the medicos to speak, and the reporter, aware of the solemnity of the moment holds the mike as steadily as Barkha Dutt held the grieving, Kashmiri terror victim, and asks him, what do they want?

The substance, as I understood, of what he was trying to say was this: apart from the usual refrain that they would talk only to the Prime Minister (which rigid stance they seemed to have relaxed a little, the next day) and not to any underlings like Arjun Singh (who don't know their place), he made three other points. What were these?

One, he wanted the government to come clear on the latest proposal on reservations, if there was one (fair enough); and if there was one, it should be rolled back,
Two, when asked what if the seats were increased to accommodate students from the general category..he tried to explain to the reporter that given the infrastructure and the 'unsustainability' of the proposal (of the increase) he wasn't in favour of any increase,
Three, he wanted the government to undertake a review of all existing reservations and an appraisal of their efficiency..

I'll deal with the third point first: a review of the existing reservations would mean, given the context that the medicos are students of AIIMS, essentially a review of SC/ST reservations because there has been no provision for OBC reservations in Central Government run educational institutions until now.

So one goal of their fight for 'equality' is to secure a commitment to review SC/ST reservations in the light of experiences gained from fifty years of its existence?

So that's a primary goal : to question even the small efforts of positive discrimination made by the government and press for their repeal because, in their view, they have failed. (Yesterday I saw the same student, I think, repeat the outrageous demand on IBN-Live on a show hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai). I believe reservations (at the moment there is a backlog 22.5 lakhs unfilled jobs, reserved for the dalits in the central government and if you consider the figures from all the states the total backlog would touch a whopping 5 million) did not succeed to the extent envisaged only because the government did not try hard enough and civil society wasn't understanding enough . And the entrenched upper caste interest groups in the government were/are strong barriers to its success. But this commitment to promote dalit participation in national life is two decades older than our existence as an independent nation. It is one of the core values of our nationhood - without it, other ideals which hold our nation together become meaningless.

So that's their view- that caste based discrimination didn't/doesn't exist, that caste doesn't limit/restrict opportunities. And even if it did/does exist, caste shouldn't be given any weightage when admitting students into educational institutions.

Is that your opinion too educated, middle class India and all those signing petitions endorsing this idea of 'equality' that caste is irrelevant and it should be ignored ? Even when you consider a dalit applicant?

Let's consider this for a moment :' It became obvious during the conference that Indian diplomats, in their extreme activism to keep caste out of the final declaration of this world gathering and its work programme, not only brought the Indian government into high disrepute, but also brought down the moral standing of India before the eyes of the world. India lost any possibility of claiming to be a world leader in the promotion and protection of human rights until it changes its public position on the caste issue. The international conscience, which is being awakened to one of the cruellest forms of discrimination after many centuries of neglect, is naturally questioning the Indian stand and is asking "What kind of nation is this?"'

That was an observation of an NGO on what happened during the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance at Durban, in 2001, when the issue of Dalits came up. Here's another report. The Indian government did succed in keeping caste out of the agenda of the states meeting at the conference-but only by the skin of its teeth. But caste (and discrimination based on it) did make it to the agenda of the NGOs gathering which preceded the governmental conference.

And now caste discrimination, as directed against the Dalits, is on the watchlist of not just NGOs and human rights groups but also some governments and ordinary people, across the world. As the NGO says ' it is time the international community, particularly the human rights community, speaks with one voice in support of the Dalits and calls for a quickening of their liberation. It is also time to tell the Indian government: "Shame, shame." Likewise, it is also necessary to blame the United States and several European countries for their failure to support the cause of the Dalits. It is time as well to appreciate those countries which had the courage to support the Dalit issue despite heavy pressure not to do so. Above all, it is time to tell the United Nations, in particular Kofi Annan, the secretary-general, and Mary Robinson, the human rights commissioner, to show resoluteness and their proactive support for the cause of the Dalits. It is also time to remind everyone that history is in the making on this issue.'

Next time, the Indian government might not be so very lucky - going by the way it's trying its best not to displease some people fighting for 'equality', like one of the commenters on my previous post ('..truly a lallu') who observed that '.. and to be a bhangi one does not require any talents' implying a bhangi takes up scavenging only because he lacks talents and not because, as the section on Dalits in the declaration produced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at their forum-Caste and Discrimination Based on Occupation and Descent, before the WCAR says "(21) 'Untouchability' is a manifestation of caste based discrimination that labels people as "polluted" or "impure", thereby denying them entry into places of religious worship, assigning them menial and degrading work such as cleaning toilets, skinning and disposal of dead animals, digging graves and sweeping ' And another commenter (non obc voice) think they work as bhangis because that is their core competency- '...we are open to have reservations in you core competency areas like bhangis, barbers, chamars for the ppl...' And yet another keen observer: 'Btw, u have done quite a good research on these pages.. seems work of some Upper caste..May be some blood in your veins ;-) '

Yes, next time the Indian government will have to own up to not doing anything about a system that breeds prejudices like those that I cited above.

Are those, like the student I referred to in the beginning of this post, fighting for 'equality' aware of the implications of what they are saying? At least, think of all those visas to the U.S., and Australia and wherever that might suddenly disppear.

To conclude I'd like to quote from the AHRC report again :'A little more should be said of the Dalits' drum, however. This was at one time called derogatorily the "scavenger's drum." After days of working under the most savage of conditions, these people, the poorest people of India, used to create a short spell of humanity in their own ghetto by dancing to the tune of their drums. The drum, therefore, was the sound of the ghetto and the sound of people who were silenced through the cruellest of punishments and religious sanctions.'

Now, the 'scavenger's drum' is echoing around the world. Beware.

Meritophilia

'Because world class players (and earth shattering discoveries) are not made in a vacuum. They require huge infrastructural support, money and a culture of excellence. As we said in the comments section, Harvard alone has an endowment fund of 25 billion$, incidentally many times India’s education budget, do any of our IITs have this kind of support? How much is the pay of an IIT professor? How much is the research funding? What is the inducement to conduct independent research? Being a Professor in America is the second most coveted job, could you say the same for India? ...'
That's a 'meritophile' justifying the poor performance of IIT alumni in the world of discovery (as pointed out here) - sad to know that the IITians suffer from the same kind of problems as the OBCs . But we know the OBCs' sense of deprivation is fake - because they lack only India class facilities!

...truly a lallu

'...rough estimates - without the benefit of cross-tabulations - seem to suggest that Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, OBCs and Muslims may together account for around 90 per cent of the population below the poverty line in both rural and urban India. If true, this is of immense significance for policy and deserves detailed investigation. ' Some interesting figures from the1991 Census analysed here.

What was Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav, so very expansively, promising yesterday ? '10% of the seats would be reserved for poor students from the upper castes.' The above figures tell you poor (below the poverty line families) from the upper castes constitute around !0% of the total poor in India. So what percentage do the poor from the upper castes amount to in the total population of India?

Laloo is looking at upper caste votebanks I suppose - why would he otherwise propose to reserve four times as many seats for a particular section of Indians as their percentage in the total population?

Is caste a barrier to professional success?

Asks IBN-Live, and wants you to sms your answers. This announcement was preceded by the mandatory round-up of 'anti-reservations' protests across the country (the newsperson never fails to emphasize that) and a story on an OBC kid from Bihar who made it to IIT Kharagpur without the'crutches' (the newsperson can't stop herself from saying what she thinks of ..*&@ reservations) of reservations.The routine is repeated, more or less, across the channels with subtle and not-so-subtle insertion of hints that the Mandal recommendations are still up for questioning, meaning its very basis, recommendations and methods should be questioned (as if they haven't been questioned earlier) and directions (do it-that's the media's appeal to the anti-reservationists)...interspersed with wise heads like Dipankar Gupta and others almost saying that caste is an irrelevant issue and Mandal was flawed etc.,.. And a commenter on one of my posts, couched in much abuse and...asks me why do I consider 'anti-reservations protests' a nautanki ?
Recalcitrant OBCs and Dalits are routinely subjected to much more than lathis and water cannons in this country. Students from the lower castes have to routinely stage rallies, after having begged and pleaded with their school/college authorities and babus in social welfare departments in most states, to appeal to their state governments to release their 'merit-cum-means scholarships'. They are never allowed anywhere near the mantralaya/secretariat.. forget the minister's house or the Mukhya Mantri Nivas or the Governor's Bungalow..(they wouldn't even dare to think of going anywhere near those places). If you ever happen to witness any of these rallies, feast your curiosity on the sight of hundreds of scrawny, shabbily dressed kids scrambling for cover from the lathis, racing and diving and occasionally darting back to pick up their ..chappals. Watch them scale walls and skirt and avoid the lathis with such ease. You'd think it was a game for them. Except that, running through the minds of many of them is this choice : drought and starvation back home and free food in the hostel and education.. . Their names are routinely struck off the rolls of their colleges for not having paid their fees, thrown out of their hostels.. I think of all those clever people calculating how many OBC kids could get school education if the subsidy that would go to supporting an OBC student's education at an IIT/IIM were diverted to the schoolkids' cause. No, you wouldn't get any figures on how many upper caste kids' subsidised education at the IIT/IIMs or dozens of other fancy institutions, since the day they were started, could have supported how many OBC?Dalit kids' education. And those sensible people who suggest, so helpfully (why doesn't anyone ever think of these simple answers!), 'give them good schooling ..first' , they wouldn't know ,of course, just how whimsically state governments can scale down budgets for 'welfare' students. Scholarships for two lakh students last year.. scholarships for one lakh seventy five thousand this year..You are not supposed to ask: there hasn't been a fall in admissions, in fact there has been an increase.. then why this scaling down? None of the sensible people actually ask this question , routinely or otherwise. It's only when the Mandal issue, every fifteen years or so, crops up do they actually bother.
So when the elite says it's protesting, are we to understand that its appointees in the government aren't actually working overtime finding out ways and means to get over this..infernal mandal thing? That Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi and Advani and Yechuri and .. aren't as exercised over the issue as that loudmouth Sibal?

The malady of India lies elsewhere

What does Justice Krishna Iyer think of 'efficiency' lost because of reservations?
"Trite arguments about efficiency are a trifle phoney. ... We are not impressed with the misfortune about the governmental personnel being manned by morons, merely because a sprinkling of harijans and Girijans happened to find their way into the service. The malady of modern India lies elsewhere, and the merit monger are greater risks in many respects than the native tribals, and slightly better off lower caste. .. The fundamental question arises, as to what's 'merit' and 'suitability'? Elitists, whose sympathies with the masses have dried up, are from standards of Indian people, least suitable to run the government and least meritorious to handle the state business. ... A sensitized heart and vibrant head tuned to the tears of the people, will speedily quicken the developmental needs of the country... Sincere dedication and intellectual integrity - these are some of the components of merit and suitability- not a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Simian. Unfortunately, the very orientation of our selection process is distorted and those like the candidates from Scheduled Castes whom from their birth, have a traumatic understanding of the conditions of agrestic India, have in one sense more capability than those who lived under affluent circumstances and are callous to the human lot of the sorrowing masses."

gatekeepersoftheshrine

Noticed this at a blog with the name - entrancetotheshrine :
'Just when we thought it was time to give the reservation quotas the boot, the Centre declares that 49.5 percent of the total seats in IITs, IIMs and Central Universities will be reserved for the Backward Classes.'
Who are 'we'? Obviously not the Dalits or the Backward Classes- and definitely not the Muslims or the Christians who are having a hard time in some places saving themselves from policemen's boots. Who's left?
And the blogger goes on to ask: 'And weren't we all geared up to abolish the caste system?'
By giving the quotas - and by extension the reserved classes, the boot?
This is a mere sampler, an indication of what passes for 'sane', sensible, informed opinion among the elite in India over the reservations issue. From 1990 till now. And before that. We don't object to the arrogance, it's expected of any ruling class in the world, but the intemperance of language... And the veiled abuse. Bury the Bill this session and the next. Direct it back to the service entrance and one group-of-ministers after another, from this parliament to the next. But we'll wait, the language will keep searing our soul and so we'll wait.

Thanks Al, pal

It feels nice getting noticed. Ask Bajaj, or Nilekani or Mittal. It doesn't matter what you get noticed for: producing slipshod copies of someone else's idea, or doing the nuts-and-bolts work on someone else's design, or riding to success on someone else's backbone. It's a shame that these guys don't get due credit- ask any old fortysomething homemaker what brand would she associate with quality, and she'd instinctively reply -Kanjeevaram sarees. Ask any fifteensomething teenager about service and he'd point to his Kolhapuri chappals and not to Mittal. You won't even get info on the next train to Agra (oh those pedhas!) on those phones, he'd complain. Ask any wise sixtysomething paanwallah/stockbroker/babu about craftsmanship and he/they'd go on and on..about silks from Banaras or carpets from Kashmir or dhurries from Warangal or silverware from Bidar or ... I ask you, are these India's top brands? And to think that the folks who make those products aren't even qualified - have you ever heard of a tailor or a weaver or any of those other no-good charlatans learning his craft at institutions like NIFT or NID? How can anyone trust them?
But there does seem to be someone who actually trusts them, listens to them.Reads them. Even though he lives in a place other than my India. Thanks Al, hope to meet you someday in our India.

The nautanki has started

The nautanki has started now. Piddling little rallies at India Gate, lighting of candles, distributing of pamphlets, shouting of jingle-like slogans, wearing of badges and other promotional merchandise and waving of banners. Their strength is so very low that the TV channels have to step in with constant vocal support and clever camerawork to make it seem like Dandi or Jallianwallah Bagh.And 'Rang de Basanti'. 'Another minister speaks against reservations.." divisions within the reserved classes..' 'Arjun Singh's tactical silence..' "Arjun Singh in a tight spot..'. Token OBCs supporting these rallies are bandied around channels like trophies. And Baqwas Dutt speaks again of the alleged 'siege mentality' of the OBCs. Yes, they are under siege.. Isn't that the reason why the elite speak of 'invasion and ..intrusion into institutions of excellence..' etc on her programme?. And take out rallies against a government order that hasn't even been formulated or brought before the central cabinet yet?
Ms.Dutt, who's displaying the siege mentality? The OBCs have waited since independence for a share in educational institutions, jobs and ..What makes you think they don't have the perseverance to fight this out now?