Article by an ex-IIMA prof. on Quotas
Similar ideas from a prof. in IIM. Long post.. read at leisure.
=================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 19:04:12 +0000
From: tv rao
Subject: Re: We can and should do!
To: Varun Arya
Dear varun: I have written the following piece. If you like you may
circulate the same to others. Regards T V Rao
Reservations Are likely to Promote Divisiveness and are likely to
harm the Country as well as the OBCs more
Dr. T. V. Rao
Formerly Professor, IIMA
A few years ago I was working in "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Indonesia as a USAID
Consultant to the Ministry of Health. As a part of my work I had to
take a group of Doctors on field trips to teach them Task Analysis a
technique we introduced to bring more professionalism in the
management of health services in Indonesia. Whenever I asked the team
to choose a Health Center for filed work, they would talk among
themselves and in five minutes time come up with their proposal and it
was always unanimous. I was amazed at the team work and remarked about
the same with appreciation to the participants who were Doctors. One
of the lady Doctors narrated me the following in response to my
complements. I reconstruct this from my memory:
"Professor Rao, I agree that we in Indonesia work like a team. We
care for each other and respect each other. There is a lot of sharing
that takes place. I also agree that it should strike you as an
important part of our culture as I believe that your country which
taught us a lot at one time has this one aspect very much lacking in
them. I am sorry to say this as I had only one experience which I like
to narrate".
She continued... "Professor, A few months ago I was attending a
meeting of UNFPA in Bangkok and it was attended by participants from
various countries. Each country had two or more delegates. We had
delegated from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh,
Philippines, Japan and India etc. One thing I noticed was, whenever a
Pakistani spoke something about his country his colleague supported
it. Whenever a Bangladeshi spoke about his country his colleague from
another department supported it. Whether it is a Sri Lankan or,
Pakistani, or Bangladeshi or Malaysian, or a Singaporean, they
supported each other in their presentations. However whenever an
Indian spoke the second or third Indian contradicted him and said what
my colleague said is true in his state (Tamil Nadu) as he comes from
Tamil Nadu but the situation is different in my state (UP) as I come
from UP and the third person gave a third story. The convention was
filled with contradictions by Indians. Surprisingly the contradictions
extended even to fights. We found that by the fourth day the Indian
delegates were even staying at different places and coming at
different times to the conference. So I understand that in your
country team work is difficult as every Indian seem to differentiate
themselves a lot more than integrate unlike other countries. We are an
integrating nation and we help each other"
This episode left strong impressions in my mind about how much a
divided nation we are. I am deeply pained to see that we are not
learning lessons from our own past and from others and are pursuing
policies that divide the nation more than integrate the same. Our
representatives whom we elected seem to play this game very well, keep
us divided for their statistics of votes, get us to fight and keep
managing their show.
Reservations in Higher education at the cost of merit are divisive
and wrongly Timed
Our country is on fast growth curve. Just when it was being noticed
by every one for its potential, our politicians seem to put the
country backward. The most disturbing thing is their insensitivity to
listen to people's voices and continued adamancy to pursue their lop
sided policies.
We are a divided nation. Our minds are divisive as we are taught from
birth to view each other in terms of the caste, and sub caste or
gothra, community, religious affiliation, language, regional
affiliation, etc. various variables. Because we are taught from the
early child hood to view each other in terms of these variables our
self concept and behavior towards each other is determined by the
classification we hold of each other. When we judge the other person
by virtue of his/her affiliations, we undermine or overestimate the
capability of the other person as per the stereotypes we hold. When
such stereotypes are shown towards us by others we spend time fighting
such stereo types if they are to our disadvantage. When we discover
that the other person does not believe in our internal capability and
is attributing to us competencies by virtue of his stereotypes he
holds about us and not by virtue of our real capabilities, it hurts
and we engage ourselves to prove what we really are capable. The
result is always fights and fights to prove or disprove. As a result
a lot of psychological energies are spent on proving and disproving.
This results in enormous energies wasted in unproductive transactions.
The amount of wastage of Nation's time in inter-state time wasted in
water disputes, communal riots and their aftermath, caste wars are all
drags on the nation. It affects economic development. Our policy
makers should be sensitive to this and should engage the nation in
more productive issues than in such transactional issues. They should
aim building integrative minds rather than perpetuating the
divisiveness in our country. What we need today is an integrative
minds for nation building and not those who are dividing the nation
further. People and politicians and policy makers who are capable of
working towards projecting an integrated India and Indians as one is
the need of the hour.
In India certain sections were and perhaps continue to be backward by
virtue of the community in which they were born. This was the story a
few decades ago. Not any more. I come from a village in Andhra which
was dominated by upper caste community. Recently when I visited my
village the President was from SC and I had to go to meet him to get a
certificate of succession after my mother's death. It was very
pleasing to see the same village being managed by SC community who
otherwise stayed outside the village. This is what reservations have
done in the last few decades and there has been an appreciable growth.
I also noticed that many from the so called forward communities are at
the same level at the OBCs economically.
Reservations are not in the Interests of the OBCs themselves as it
undermines their merit
When I was PGP chairman at IIMA in mid eighties, we were admitting a
number of candidates on reservation as per the Govt. directive. We
were lowering the admission standard to fill the reservation quota to
a point but not beyond a point. Even then we discovered across the
years that while some of the candidates admitted through quota made a
mark like others, a few of them would not pass the minimum standards
and either have to repeat or even drop out. IIMA did not want to
change the standards of the graduating students. Just as you don't
want to have substandard Doctors put into the community by lowering
the graduating standards. This used to put the reserved category
candidate into a double disadvantage. First we admitted the student in
reserved category, branded him and whenever he did not make it to
"pass" we showed concern and in all these discussion branding the
candidate has been a torture for the candidate on the campus. In
addition it is a double torture to admit a candidate at a lower cut
off and expect him to perform like others. When he did not make it,
raising issues like "the reserved candidates are of poor quality",
etc. perpetuate the myth on the capabilities of the candidates. This
used to happen with an extremely few cases but all the reserved
candidates would get branded into one category though most of them are
as meritorious as any one else. This used to do damage to the good
ones as well as the not so good ones because of admission under
reserved category. In my view this is a wrong way of supporting a
deprived candidate. You may have given the persona seat by reserving
the same for him but you have made his life miserable by continuously
reminding him that he is there because of reservation and keep
debating if further concessions should be given in relaxing the
standards etc. This is certainly against any human dignity. It makes
those who got in through reservation unhappy and those who could not
get in unhappy. Then why further divide the country.
Affirmative Action is in Providing Primary and Secondary Education to
Bring out the Merit in any one who is Socially or Economically
backward
If it costs Rs. 8,000 crores to increase seats in few medical
colleges and engineering colleges to accommodate few hundreds of OBC
students and the burden has to be passed on to the tax payers the
question we ask the government is what are they doing to create merit
in the students who belong to OBC. I think merit exists in abundance
in any candidate irrespective of the caste or community into which he
or she is born. It is the deprivation of opportunity at an early age
that determines whether the merit is being rough out or not.
Government and all of us should spend our money and effort to provide
stimulating environment and education at an early stage so that merit
in the candidate can be nurtured. We may pay special attention to
those who were born in socially and economically deprived families. To
classify any one as OBC just by virtue of the caste is not enough as
it promotes merit in less deprived people. Merit can be created y
exposing them to right education at primary and secondary levels and
not by changing the standards of admission. I don't understand why
does any one need to give this simple reasoning to a HRD Minister or
Prime Minister of a country. They don't need this. It looks that they
are working under some other compulsions which seem to outweigh the
National Interests.
I am happy the modern youth is fighting and arguing for the abolition
of the caste system.
It is high time the caste system is abolished from our country and
every one is treated with same dignity and every one is given equal
opportunity to bring out the merit is him/her. Not only the caste any
form of divisiveness by virtue of religion, caste community etc.
should be minimized and national Integration needs to be promoted. It
is high time that we direct our attention to build integrative minds.
The divisive mind set is evident even in the best of the corporation
where team work is difficult and Indians are known to be poor team
workers. Our policies seem to perpetuate the divisive mind and a lot
of time of our nation is being engaged in fighting divisiveness
created by our policies.
T. V. Rao Chairman, TVRLS, 603, Parshwa Opp. Rajpath Club Ahmedabad,
380015, India Phone 91-79-26872718, 26870312 Fax 26870687 Res:
26852317 e-mail: tvraoad1@sancharnet.in
=================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 19:04:12 +0000
From: tv rao
Subject: Re: We can and should do!
To: Varun Arya
Dear varun: I have written the following piece. If you like you may
circulate the same to others. Regards T V Rao
Reservations Are likely to Promote Divisiveness and are likely to
harm the Country as well as the OBCs more
Dr. T. V. Rao
Formerly Professor, IIMA
A few years ago I was working in "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Indonesia as a USAID
Consultant to the Ministry of Health. As a part of my work I had to
take a group of Doctors on field trips to teach them Task Analysis a
technique we introduced to bring more professionalism in the
management of health services in Indonesia. Whenever I asked the team
to choose a Health Center for filed work, they would talk among
themselves and in five minutes time come up with their proposal and it
was always unanimous. I was amazed at the team work and remarked about
the same with appreciation to the participants who were Doctors. One
of the lady Doctors narrated me the following in response to my
complements. I reconstruct this from my memory:
"Professor Rao, I agree that we in Indonesia work like a team. We
care for each other and respect each other. There is a lot of sharing
that takes place. I also agree that it should strike you as an
important part of our culture as I believe that your country which
taught us a lot at one time has this one aspect very much lacking in
them. I am sorry to say this as I had only one experience which I like
to narrate".
She continued... "Professor, A few months ago I was attending a
meeting of UNFPA in Bangkok and it was attended by participants from
various countries. Each country had two or more delegates. We had
delegated from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh,
Philippines, Japan and India etc. One thing I noticed was, whenever a
Pakistani spoke something about his country his colleague supported
it. Whenever a Bangladeshi spoke about his country his colleague from
another department supported it. Whether it is a Sri Lankan or,
Pakistani, or Bangladeshi or Malaysian, or a Singaporean, they
supported each other in their presentations. However whenever an
Indian spoke the second or third Indian contradicted him and said what
my colleague said is true in his state (Tamil Nadu) as he comes from
Tamil Nadu but the situation is different in my state (UP) as I come
from UP and the third person gave a third story. The convention was
filled with contradictions by Indians. Surprisingly the contradictions
extended even to fights. We found that by the fourth day the Indian
delegates were even staying at different places and coming at
different times to the conference. So I understand that in your
country team work is difficult as every Indian seem to differentiate
themselves a lot more than integrate unlike other countries. We are an
integrating nation and we help each other"
This episode left strong impressions in my mind about how much a
divided nation we are. I am deeply pained to see that we are not
learning lessons from our own past and from others and are pursuing
policies that divide the nation more than integrate the same. Our
representatives whom we elected seem to play this game very well, keep
us divided for their statistics of votes, get us to fight and keep
managing their show.
Reservations in Higher education at the cost of merit are divisive
and wrongly Timed
Our country is on fast growth curve. Just when it was being noticed
by every one for its potential, our politicians seem to put the
country backward. The most disturbing thing is their insensitivity to
listen to people's voices and continued adamancy to pursue their lop
sided policies.
We are a divided nation. Our minds are divisive as we are taught from
birth to view each other in terms of the caste, and sub caste or
gothra, community, religious affiliation, language, regional
affiliation, etc. various variables. Because we are taught from the
early child hood to view each other in terms of these variables our
self concept and behavior towards each other is determined by the
classification we hold of each other. When we judge the other person
by virtue of his/her affiliations, we undermine or overestimate the
capability of the other person as per the stereotypes we hold. When
such stereotypes are shown towards us by others we spend time fighting
such stereo types if they are to our disadvantage. When we discover
that the other person does not believe in our internal capability and
is attributing to us competencies by virtue of his stereotypes he
holds about us and not by virtue of our real capabilities, it hurts
and we engage ourselves to prove what we really are capable. The
result is always fights and fights to prove or disprove. As a result
a lot of psychological energies are spent on proving and disproving.
This results in enormous energies wasted in unproductive transactions.
The amount of wastage of Nation's time in inter-state time wasted in
water disputes, communal riots and their aftermath, caste wars are all
drags on the nation. It affects economic development. Our policy
makers should be sensitive to this and should engage the nation in
more productive issues than in such transactional issues. They should
aim building integrative minds rather than perpetuating the
divisiveness in our country. What we need today is an integrative
minds for nation building and not those who are dividing the nation
further. People and politicians and policy makers who are capable of
working towards projecting an integrated India and Indians as one is
the need of the hour.
In India certain sections were and perhaps continue to be backward by
virtue of the community in which they were born. This was the story a
few decades ago. Not any more. I come from a village in Andhra which
was dominated by upper caste community. Recently when I visited my
village the President was from SC and I had to go to meet him to get a
certificate of succession after my mother's death. It was very
pleasing to see the same village being managed by SC community who
otherwise stayed outside the village. This is what reservations have
done in the last few decades and there has been an appreciable growth.
I also noticed that many from the so called forward communities are at
the same level at the OBCs economically.
Reservations are not in the Interests of the OBCs themselves as it
undermines their merit
When I was PGP chairman at IIMA in mid eighties, we were admitting a
number of candidates on reservation as per the Govt. directive. We
were lowering the admission standard to fill the reservation quota to
a point but not beyond a point. Even then we discovered across the
years that while some of the candidates admitted through quota made a
mark like others, a few of them would not pass the minimum standards
and either have to repeat or even drop out. IIMA did not want to
change the standards of the graduating students. Just as you don't
want to have substandard Doctors put into the community by lowering
the graduating standards. This used to put the reserved category
candidate into a double disadvantage. First we admitted the student in
reserved category, branded him and whenever he did not make it to
"pass" we showed concern and in all these discussion branding the
candidate has been a torture for the candidate on the campus. In
addition it is a double torture to admit a candidate at a lower cut
off and expect him to perform like others. When he did not make it,
raising issues like "the reserved candidates are of poor quality",
etc. perpetuate the myth on the capabilities of the candidates. This
used to happen with an extremely few cases but all the reserved
candidates would get branded into one category though most of them are
as meritorious as any one else. This used to do damage to the good
ones as well as the not so good ones because of admission under
reserved category. In my view this is a wrong way of supporting a
deprived candidate. You may have given the persona seat by reserving
the same for him but you have made his life miserable by continuously
reminding him that he is there because of reservation and keep
debating if further concessions should be given in relaxing the
standards etc. This is certainly against any human dignity. It makes
those who got in through reservation unhappy and those who could not
get in unhappy. Then why further divide the country.
Affirmative Action is in Providing Primary and Secondary Education to
Bring out the Merit in any one who is Socially or Economically
backward
If it costs Rs. 8,000 crores to increase seats in few medical
colleges and engineering colleges to accommodate few hundreds of OBC
students and the burden has to be passed on to the tax payers the
question we ask the government is what are they doing to create merit
in the students who belong to OBC. I think merit exists in abundance
in any candidate irrespective of the caste or community into which he
or she is born. It is the deprivation of opportunity at an early age
that determines whether the merit is being rough out or not.
Government and all of us should spend our money and effort to provide
stimulating environment and education at an early stage so that merit
in the candidate can be nurtured. We may pay special attention to
those who were born in socially and economically deprived families. To
classify any one as OBC just by virtue of the caste is not enough as
it promotes merit in less deprived people. Merit can be created y
exposing them to right education at primary and secondary levels and
not by changing the standards of admission. I don't understand why
does any one need to give this simple reasoning to a HRD Minister or
Prime Minister of a country. They don't need this. It looks that they
are working under some other compulsions which seem to outweigh the
National Interests.
I am happy the modern youth is fighting and arguing for the abolition
of the caste system.
It is high time the caste system is abolished from our country and
every one is treated with same dignity and every one is given equal
opportunity to bring out the merit is him/her. Not only the caste any
form of divisiveness by virtue of religion, caste community etc.
should be minimized and national Integration needs to be promoted. It
is high time that we direct our attention to build integrative minds.
The divisive mind set is evident even in the best of the corporation
where team work is difficult and Indians are known to be poor team
workers. Our policies seem to perpetuate the divisive mind and a lot
of time of our nation is being engaged in fighting divisiveness
created by our policies.
T. V. Rao Chairman, TVRLS, 603, Parshwa Opp. Rajpath Club Ahmedabad,
380015, India Phone 91-79-26872718, 26870312 Fax 26870687 Res:
26852317 e-mail: tvraoad1@sancharnet.in
posted by Anand at 2:57 PM
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