Concentrate on primary education and introduce transparency in recruitments

June 2, 2006

I am from a village in eastern India. The government primary school I attended hardly had any infrastructure, not even a roof or blackboard. My parents were not rich either. Does anyone think that I got "equal" opportunity as compared to St. Xaviers, Calcutta or DPS RK Puram, Delhi or Doon Schools?

Then should people like me start demanding that students from villages also should get reservation? But the fact that even without reservation I reached at the top of my profession and ultimately attended some best universities in the world. I can successfully compete with any student, educated all through in Harvard or Stanford or Cambridge or so. No one gave me any reservation. For that I can keep my head high and dignity.

Caste is a real social problem. No one knows that better than a person from a village in India. But still I believe that reservation is not the solution. It will only create more division among people and encourage corruption and crime besides bringing down efficiency.

Govt should set up good schools, make decent education available to all, campaign aggressively against social discriminations (all sorts of discrimination, including caste, religion, gender etc).

Nepotism and corrupt recruitment practices is very high in India which in term favors upper castes as they traditionally occupies most of the high positions, be it govt or private. But people from lower caste are equally corrupt when they get power.

We know many examples of that. After all, we all (lower or upper caste) are coming from the same society, product of the same system. That explains why we don't get Gold medal in Olympics or Nobel Prize even when there is no reservation. Upper caste professionals are not necessarily the better one.

Money and power can buy almost anything, starting from education (read degree), job, and government positions. IIT professionals are not necessarily more brilliant one as compared to that from many other engineering colleges, but surely IIT students are better trained, familiar with latest techniques. A student with higher marks does not mean that s/he is more intelligent.

An IAS officer does not guarantee a better administration as compared to many non-IAS administrators. We severely lack accountability and credibility in most of our systems, starting from education to policy making. It's a system failure. We need to make our system better, more accountable and credible. To do that, we need to have "good" people in policy making, i.e in politics.

This reservation controversy is a wake up call for all patriotic and eligible Indians. We are facing this situation and years of under-development mainly due to our corrupt, illogical, mediocre or below mediocre politicians.

The main reason for that we, the so-called intellectual Indians, do not like politics. Rather we hate politics and politicians. Only the worthless, criminal minded students enter politics in post-independent India.

On top of that, some people treat this as a "family business" to maintain power and source of easy money (caste is irrelevant here). So they send their sons and daughters to US or Europe, buy some degree and go back to India to keep the cycle of corruption and inefficiency going.

This situation will not change until a good number of honest intellectuals take up politics as profession. May not be while studying or working, but may be after retirement. Else we will keep on blaming on politicians but situation will not change. These bunch of corrupt politicians control our everyday life while we hardly have any control over them (vote in India is nothing but farce though changing very slowly).

So come on, join politics with a long-term plan and eradicate these parasites from policy making. If "good" people do not come, the positions will be occupied by these parasites and policies like "reservation" will be implemented.

In short, better to concentrate on primary schools and high schools rather than reserving seats in higher education, jobs etc. and introduce transparency in all selections (recruitments, scholarships, fellowships etc.).

More importantly, "good and honest" people should join politics, at least after their retirement rather than sidelining themselves and allowing the highly vocal and corrupt people to occupy the policy-making positions.