Reservation - A Remedy Worse than the Disease (PART ONE)

Want to know about a classic case of a remedy worse than the disease? Then look at India’s policy of reservation for certain sections of its people in admissions to higher educational institutions and in jobs with government and semi-government establishments. The spread and depth of reservation in various spheres of education and employment are different between the Centre and States. Here let me look at its general thrust and effects.

            Why was reservation brought in?  It was designed and introduced widely – more so after 1950 - as a tool to counter a malady in our society, as a remedy for the supposed effects of a social disease.  The disease is real but what is imagined today as its effects are not the effects of the disease.  Those effects have a different cause and let me talk about the actual cause a little later.

What then is the disease?  It is the feeling in some groups of people (I’ll refer to these people simply as ‘Non-reserved Group’) that they are superior to some other groups of people merely on the basis of the birth of a person in some caste or community.  Also, their feeling of superiority is accepted in varying degrees by those other groups of people (I’ll refer to all these other people simply as ‘Reserved Group’) against whom such feeling is held.  Yes, over time and as of now acts of superiority are increasingly being resisted by the Reserved Group.  But the problem has not gone away.

Let us also remember: there have been good many men and women born in the caste or community of the Non-reserved Group, who do not entertain any feeling of superiority.  Anyone who has moved with them, including persons of the Reserved Group, sense it.  Such good souls are going up in number in today’s India, especially in bigger towns.

World over there are diverse grounds which instill in one group of people a feeling of superiority over another -  It could be birth in a religion, race, caste or clan or region or country or just the colour of their skin. So the problem is one of attitude – a problem with the mind of some who fancy themselves superior.  India has been trying to solve the problem by balancing advantages and opportunities between the Reserved Group and the Non-reserved Group in some way through reservation.

Reservation gives key advantages and privileges to the Reserved Group which will otherwise ordinarily reach the Non-reserved Group for their individual merit.  In India admissions in colleges for preferred courses, especially professional courses like medicine and some branches of engineering, are tough – i.e., applicants outnumber available seats many times - and jobs in government are a huge bonanza which lakhs aspire for but only a little few get.  So when admission and employment chances are plucked out from one group and given to another year after year, that will surely sustain and grow the divide between the two groups. By doing this our governments only give heartburn to the Non-reserved Group and put a villainous face on the Reserved Group, and hence the former come to dislike the latter more.  It works something like this: Imagine you have queued up before a store to buy rations, with ten other buyers ahead of you in the line. The store’s stock of rations for the month is dwindling and you are not sure if they will last till you move up to the counter.  At that time if a store assistant lets some twenty late comers break the queue and join ahead of your place, you would be angrier with those twenty who took your place and pushed you back than with the store assistant who is in the position of a government in India.  So reservation just sharpens the mind of the Non-reserved Group against the Reserved Group, and blocks any possible natural cure to an old attitude.  This is one reason why the remedy is worse than the disease.

Reservation has guaranteed to the Reserved Group upto 50% of prized college admissions and government and semi-government jobs.   Some states made it even more than 50%, and some of them are reviewing the excess over 50% upon court interventions now and then.  What does reservation do to the Reserved Group?  It restrains competitive instincts in many of them to do well in their studies or to make themselves fully deserving for coveted jobs.  In a way the State brings them up like spoilt children affecting their growth potential.  Next, when they wrest college admissions and jobs from the Reserved Group and are catapulted over the heads of the Reserved Group, they would also experience a sense of superiority which strikes the Reserved Group psychologically.  When the law further says that the Reserved Group can not only have upto 50% exclusive reservation, with relaxed eligibility standards, but can also compete with the Non-reserved Group on merit in the open competition quota and edge out persons in that remaining space too, any human being on the other side will feel hurt by its unfairness.  So this creates further rifts between the two groups.  All should know that this has happened as a natural consequence of reservation. These are other facets of the remedy being worse than the disease.

There are also some side effects of reservation which are as serious as the primary disease.  One, reservation has tripped merit in about 50% of admissions to colleges and in government and public sector manpower recruitments.  This means we are not letting many of India’s best brains freely into our colleges to shape themselves and work for the country, and the result is a self-induced loss for the nation.   Two, It has put mediocrity on a pedestal and has left a large pool of highly talented individuals frustrated and scarred inside, some of them leaving the country to study further, research and later work. Many US universities, foreign governmental agencies and business corporations abroad should secretly thank India for such a plentiful supply of untapped Indian talent.  When a bright mind goes out of India because it is not allowed to flower inside the country, the loss is not just of that one individual.  He, along with his or her children and their progenies - great Indian assets - could be lost to India for good.  It is like gifting away a golden goose.

Do such admissions and jobs for some individuals of the Reserved Group advance or delight other members of that group who are still in the waiting for similar entries? Not really.  You know that, irrespective of the group, in every Indian family circle someone lands on a good college admission or a good job and someone else does not.  The person not getting it cannot be joyous for more than a moment about the other person’s luck.  Mostly he would feel bad on being left out and could understandably be jealous too.  So it is a wrong notion and a false propaganda that reservation will benefit a group as a whole.

Look at advanced nations to which Indians flock to work, earn and from where they remit foreign exchange to India, which the country gratefully welcomes.  Merit is not deliberately discounted or walked over in those countries as a state policy under self-defeating theories.  Their ways help them excel while our ways make us survive – proof for all this, centering on Indian achievers, has reached the Nobel Committee more than once.

Consider this, which did not happen just by accident: after Independence and till now, four Noble Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economics have been won by persons born in India to Indian parents, but the pioneering work for their achievements came from their studies and research work in reputed universities or laboratories abroad for long periods.  And consider this too: Nobel Peace Prizes to Mother Teresa (who was a foreigner born abroad but acquired Indian citizenship later) in 1979 and to Indian Kailash Satyarthi in 2014 were awarded for their stellar work within India in caring for neglected and destitute people or in freeing exploited children – social conditions which point to a failure of the welfare responsibilities of a nation and provided a platform for their great work and well-merited award.  So we see that the Nobel recognition to the last two speak also of inglorious settings that India’s political administrators provided to them and showcased to the world – something which does not help good academic work and the advancements that go along with it.

                                                                                                (To be continued)

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Copyright © R. Veera Raghavan 2015