Equality: Why not?

The first time the reservations hit me was at the time of entering a law school. I did not get in the preferred law school inspite of getting much higher marks than the reserved category applicants who were admitted. I really felt bad, almost wronged. However, soon enough I realized that it was not so personal and how much more ‘wronged’ a person can feel if she is disadvantaged throughout life in almost all things big and small, for generations together, and if all the social institutions and structures (and processes) were at best, indifferent to their existence and at worst, oppressed them beyond our imagination. Came with this, the realization of how ‘advantaged’ I was generally.

I am writing this as a small attempt to make people, who are on the other side of the fence cross over; as I believe (to put it very simplistically) it is just a lack of right information that makes people anti affirmative action. However, this would apply only to those who, as of today, genuinely think reservations are bad and not to those who take this line just thinking of the personal loss which they may have due to reservations, irrespective of the fact that they are aware of its benefits to the society over its supposed flaws. My side of the fence is not blindly supporting the OBC reservation proposal but supporting all possible measures aiming towards an egalitarian society over narrow self-interest.

A basic proposition which makes me support reservations is that - the actual composition of the population must be reflected broadly in its institutions; be it the government services, educational institutions or the corporate sector. In India this is not so. And when very obvious socio-economic discriminations (primarily on caste lines) exist, directly explaining the cause for such stark variance between population composition and representation of its different segments, what stops us from undoing them?

Some Arguments

I think its very naïve to dilute the reasons for reservation by derogating it solely to ‘past injustices’. What blinkers blind us from seeing the injustices we are doing today? I believe not undoing the past injustices also amounts to perpetuating them further. Accepting the 50% ceiling as imposed by the Supreme Court, we should atleast have a realization that it almost amounts to a reservation for non-SC, ST, OBCs of more than 20% as compared to their proportion in the population! Everybody need not be out to lead a just life. However this should not mean that they are given a moral right to portray themselves as the victims, when that’s not the case at all. Such large scale acceptance of anti-reservation sentiments even in the so called ‘thinking’ people is as scary as it is frustrating.

The anti-reservation protestors have set up an Equality Forum. People claiming that affirmative action violates the principles of equality just need to read a little in depth on the issue! Equality is not mere simplistic equality but ‘real’ equality. When people talk about improving basic facilities like primary education instead of giving reservations, it seems more like empty talk when on the other hand, they also crib about the tax rates and government subsidies. The National Policy on Education states "that the investment on education be gradually increased to reach a level of 6% of the National Income as early as possible.... (moreover) the outlay on education will be stepped up to ensure that during the 8th Five year Plan and onwards it will uniformly exceed 6% of the national income” (NPE, 1986). While the actual situation is that Central and State Governments' combined expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP for 2002-03 was a mere 3.1 percent (Economic Survey, 2002-03). Scholarships as an alternative to reservations will be grossly inadequate and will hardly benefit the poorest. In my opinion, the only practical way to improve schooling in the country would be to ban all the so called ‘public schools’. Let all the children go to one level of schools and see the sea change that will occur. Not only will the quality of teaching improve in government schools, children in the cities will be a little more in touch with reality, resources increasingly will be divided more equally. It has the potential to actually bring about a ‘revolution’ in the country and prevent atleast a few of the crises that are awaiting us and make finding a way out of others, a lot more easier. The crises may relate to social conflicts due to ever increasing economic divides, environmental problems due to the immense pressure on the natural resources, or even political polarizations.

Moving on to the merit argument, judging merit by a singular test should seem insufficient to people who understand the value of professional education today. Is merit what you know today or your ability to learn, especially in the context of an educational institution? It has been proved that most entrance tests are socio-culturally biased besides there being an inherent language bias. So we need to evolve other ways of judging ‘merit’. There are two more things here, firstly, we can, without much reservations presume that intelligence is almost equally distributed in the populace or atleast is not divided on caste or other socio-economic lines.

Secondly, why cannot the merit of the ‘disadvantaged’ lie in the fact that s/he studied in a rural school and still managed to do better than most who had better schooling, coaching and other support systems. Similarly, a girl from a small town could outdo most men in an entrance test inspite of taking care of her younger brother/sister, doing household chores, atleast when her mother was ill, why should that not be counted as her merit? Can anybody contend that once she is in an elite higher education institution, she will not be able to perform like others, if not better? Or simply, a kid who inspite of being in the capital, lived in a slum and studied in a Hindi medium government school, with his hard work, and determination could sit for the entrance of his choice (a feat in itself !) and though not in the top 100 but came in top 500. Once he gets an identical environment and teaching will he do any less than a kid from a reputed ‘public school’? Or, their families need it less? Or they, for some weird reason, will be inefficient and not do their job properly?

The other side of the anti merit argument is that ‘merit’ is not the sole criterion for selection in educational institutions or jobs anyways, which is not to argue that it should not be
(after redefining ‘merit’ ofcourse). As long as we have our contacts in place we don’t care for ‘merit’. Why do not we question the merit of our family doctors son who may be doing medicine after paying a huge capitation fee to secure that seat? Do we want him to treat our kids? However, the merit argument crops up only to counter reservations. We need centres of excellence which are globally competitive and for that we need only the ‘best talent’ in the country! Those who claim they do not need reservations always have the freedom to appear from the general category.

Rang De Basanti?

Watching Rang De Basanti one can understand the depth of the angst of the protestors. It starts with a personal loss or in this case an apprehension of a personal loss, goes via the India Gate and ultimately ends with the agitators being weirdly shot in a commando operation in the heart of the capital. Hopefully reel life will not repeat itself in real life in its entirety. This hope is not just to save the country’s effective democratic channels but also because the last thing one would want to see is few of the agitating students elevated to great heroic heights. A few self-immolations (in 1990 on the Mandal issue) are still given prominence neglecting all sorts of other casualties which are just incomparable in proportion. Let us just compare it to young people killed often by their own relatives (‘honour killings’) for social ‘values’ apparently based on caste, gender and religious lines. How many people see those killings as absolutely criminal even though they are clearly against all standards of human rights; be it primary right to life, personal freedom, the right to marry and to found a family. Or if you want to compare the aspect that the person is so frustrated that s/he is ‘forced’ to kill him/herself, suicides must hold as much significance. Let us examine the statistics, more than one lakh persons take their own lives in India every year (Frontline, Volume 18-Issue 21, October 13-26, 2001). The National Crime Records Bureau notes, out of every three cases of suicide reported every 15 minutes in India, one is committed by a youth in the age group of 15 to 29 (http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/apr/15spec.htm). Or lets just compare it in terms of livelihood related anxiety - twenty-five thousand farmers have committed suicide since 1997. This does not include the number of family members of farmers who have also killed themselves ("Harvesting Death" - Sarita Tukaram; CIA Factbook; Lonely Planet Guide: India; PBS; BBC). Do we ever examine the reasons why a person is forced to take such an extreme step and do we do anything about it? If it is about a life, it is about a life!

One can see slogans like “Do Not Divide Us” and “Reservation or Division” in the protest marches. To me, this only shows the protestors’ ignorance of ‘divisions’ present today as also a failure to recognize the efforts being made in the direction of bridging the divide. Some of the faces of students leading and participating in these protests show amusement more than agitation or frustration, the reasons actually claimed to be behind such ‘mass uprising’. The issue of sensitizing the youth reminds me of a game that we played in a Gender sensitization workshop. The facilitators chose certain individuals like a woman illegal migrant from Bangladesh, a paan wala in North India, a Christian widow in South India, a truck driver etc. All of us got a character each through draw of lots and were given 10-15 minutes to internalize the characters. Then we stood in a straight horizontal line. Now each one of us would take a step backwards or forward or not take a step at all, depending upon our answer to the question asked by the facilitator. Some of the questions asked there were – whether you have been to a primary school or not, do you have a bank account in your name and if yes, do you operate it as well?, Do you read a newspaper?, Do you travel alone in a bus/train alone?, Do you have a say in decision making in children and house hold affairs?, Do you own any family property?, How much role do you have in decision making regarding the use of contraceptives? By the end of this some of us were at the bottom end, some right in front, while some others in the middle. Another thing to note here is that we started from the same level which is not the case in real life. So imagine the extent of dis/advantages that operate in society and affect us as individuals by the mere fact of belonging to a certain caste, class, gender etc.

This activity can be effectively adapted in the present context. The questions can relate to the kind of housing, location of the house in the village/city, if in the rural area - level and kind of irrigation, access to local representatives and role in decision making in the development of the area, practicality of schooling (not just theoretical possibility of access), the kind of schooling, parents’ literacy level, household annual income, parents and other household members’ occupation, average age of beginning work, etc. etc. Regarding identification of characters other than on obvious caste lines, one can have identities based on schooling. For example, one of a student of a Government school in Delhi, going ‘backwards’ to a town, a smaller town to a village and on the other level, from the most reputed school to a mediocre school to a government school in the same town/city/Metro. This should not be taken to mean that Government schools are the worse ones at all locations, also at places there may be none other than a government school. Now bring in to this the additional implications of being from a lower caste.

Making Reservations Acceptable

All this must not be taken to imply that reservation is the only way to iron out the existing inequalities or that it is flawless. For example, each backward caste will have a few people who do not require reservations. Such people must be kept out of the reservation net by framing appropriate criteria in this regard. We should work towards making a policy which cannot be easily ridiculed and which does not make people feel ‘wronged’. For example, in an entrance test the final scores of the candidates can be calculated taking into consideration not just the entrance test marks but adding to it marks for caste, gender, medium of schooling, domicile area etc. This would bring everybody at par in the final scores and only the top few would be admitted. Hence the prima facie ‘discrimination’ that, somebody getting lower marks gets admitted while one getting more marks in the same entrance exam does not, is removed. Also, we should work on objectively finding and evaluating the actual effect of reservations over the past decades. A more nuanced and carefully implemented policy would help in realizing the goals better and sooner.
5/5/06