The compulsive need to oppose reservations

Pratap Bhanu Mehta wants to break down the 'tyranny of compulsory identities'. Shouldn't reservations be the last place to begin then? Reservations happen when the state finally decides to pay attention to what caste has done to a lower caste individual. A whole life precedes it: a life spent facing and struggling against, in varying degrees, many structural efforts to incapacitate that individual. Shouldn't we begin at the beginning, then? From the 'scandalous failure to prepare the preconditions for advancement'?

What are these preconditions? Mehta mentions: 'Access to primary education to access to public goods, financial support, and a robustly growing economy that provides opportunities for mobility'.

Ignoring the superciliousness in Mehta's tone which seems to indicate the implicit belief that Dalits or other backward sections of Indian society have never seriously considered or agitated for the resolution of those issues, you will probably admit: how can there be any disagreement on all those issues? But how do we get there from here? It's quite clear it is very difficult to get there from here, because we haven't got there in the last 65 years. But the ruling classes, as represented by people like Mehta, should understand that a major reason why we are still stuck here, still discussing reservations, the symptoms, is probably because they have never paid as much serious attention to, or expended as much passion in, discussing causes as they have deprecating reservations. We're still here, because the ruling classes most probably like it here.

Reservations are still here because the conditions which create the compulsory identities are still here. And what sustains those conditions? Following Mehta's train of thought, we could say the answer is: the lack of opportunities. And what causes that shortage of opportunities? One reason could be the inability to create them. Another less obvious reason could be the unwillingness to create them.

Let's explore the less obvious reason first. The ruling classes have from the very beginning stood by the ideology of merit. Remember, Nehru wanted to build a 'first class country in everything'. You can't create opportunities for all when you swear by the exclusivity inherent in the ideal of merit, can you? This is a contradiction that champions of merit like Mehta can never see.

So when he talks about 'access to primary education' does he really understand, how the ideology of merit subverts that idea? That a caste system of varyingly 'meritorious' schools doesn't ensure equal, or equitable, access to primary education to all? Shouldn't Mehta have written this 'Dear Dalits' article when the RTE Bill was being debated rather than now, when the quota in promotions is being mooted? Why are you so in love with the symptoms, Mr. Mehta? But such has been the sincerity of reservation baiters for a long, long time. If they had been truly committed to the causes they boisterously espouse they would have started looking at the design of the education system in India first. A comment by a popular blogger turned novelist, on the social media, seems to illustrate clearly the narrowness of the thinking of these reservation baiters:

The demand for reservations in promotions after 60 years of reservations in educational institutions and jobs is a proof that reservations have failed.  

He seems, like Mehta, to be another symptom lover again, disguised again as a lover of causes. All kinds of media, right from those driven by satellites to those catalysed by water coolers, are full of such profound anti-reservations wisdom. But he is right in recognizing that something has failed, and thankfully, is also much less sanctimonious than Mehta in expressing his views. What has failed? Reservations?

If the education system, even after 60 years, can accommodate students from reserved categories only under compulsion it clearly means the education system has failed. A system which seems to produce only largely 'unmeritorious' lower castes against largely 'meritorious' upper castes: isn't something wrong with that system? Any objective outsider would consider such a system deeply flawed at best, or intentionally racist at worst. To reiterate, reservations are not a failure, the education system is.

Our deeply flawed education system didn't grow out of nowhere, it grew out of a deeply flawed society. Why don't you look at our society as a whole, Mr. Mehta, instead of harping on what happens in the sphere of public employment which concerns less than one per cent of India's population? Or in higher education in central universities, the exclusive club within a club, which concerns much less than even 0.1 per cent of people in India?

The question that naturally crops up, considering the tendency, among the upper caste dominated middle classes and their shallow intellectual leaders, to rile against reservations every time a yawning gap in representation is sought to be even partially filled by an ever dilatory state: are the ruling classes truly prepared, and willing, to create more opportunities for all? Even in areas where shortages have been eliminated-- like in undergraduate medical, business and engineering colleges where many seats are going a-begging-- you'll find deep resentment against reservations and students from the reserved categories. Why? 

Around 3 lakh engineering seats remained unfilled in the country, last year. For the last few years, tens of thousands of engineering seats are going unfilled in just the three southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and now this year, the figure would be more than a couple of lakhs. Seats remain unfilled in Maharashtra, and in Uttar Pradesh, and across India. There are many medical seats that remain unfilled too. A similar situation exists in institutions offering other popular courses in law, business etc.

So the first reason, inability to create more opportunities, can't be a cause of 'lack of opportunities', at least in the field of higher education. There are enough opportunities for everyone and more; but why do we still hear such virulent and very loud complaints against reservations in our public sphere? It's not just a few 'public' intellectuals like Pratap Bhanu Mehta who seemed to have made successful careers out of reservation baiting, there seem to a whole range of social, voluntary organizations that seem to thrive entirely on agendas which, directly or indirectly, oppose reservations. The Hazare-Kejriwal movement is a prime example.

This is the reality: in higher education, India has moved beyond the era of shortages, but the Pratap Bhanu Mehtas of the 'merit-excellence' business still seem to be stuck in it. They don't want students from the reserved categories in higher education even when there are more than enough, much more than enough, seats in higher education. This paradox can't be explained through logic, because this antipathy seems to be founded on purely emotional grounds. This opposition is founded on hatred, it'd seem.

 To be continued. 

 ~~~ 

 Cartoon by Unnamati Syama Sundar.

Also published on Round Table India.

The caste-neutral whip and other jokes

He draws a mob as big as India, adds a panch-enforcer with a whip, points to the accused, and renders mob justice.

Indian children understand mob justice quite well. They see it on the street, on television, in newspapers; its appearance now in text books, thanks to this cartoon, will take the process of normalizing it a little further. Think of thieves being beaten up. Thieves being tied and beaten up. Many of them minors. 'Bad' women being beaten up. Women practising 'witchcraft' being beaten up. Dalit women being beaten up. The children also see, hear and read about khaps.

[Interspersed through this article are pictures of actual public scenes involving mobs inflicting violence on individuals. Hope they arouse some critical thinking] 

 Why did a substantial section of the brahminzed classes not see it that way? They didn't/don't see even Hazare, another whip wielder, that way. The Indian public sphere is still very unproblematic.

Some say Nehru was whipping the snail, not Dr Ambedkar. So what was Dr Ambedkar doing in the picture? Like the Indian mob usually does, Shankar wanted an identifiable two legged villain.

The joke is that the cartoon renders the whole purpose of the constitution making process meaningless: wasn't the constitution meant to do away with mob justice and other such undemocratic practices? What is the lesson the kids get out of it? Democracy? That is the joke.

~~~

please read the rest of my article on the ambedkar cartoon issue on round table india here. please also read the other, very interesting articles on the issue, while you're there:  

'The cartoon controversy: Inside the mind of one 'fanatic' Dalit - I' by Anoop Kumar,

'Whipping up 'critical pedagogy': Uncritical defense of NCERT's violence' by Savari,

'The Cartoon, the Classroom and the Idea of India' by N. Sukumar

caste satta

came across this news story: 

HYDERABAD, JAN. 20: Everonn, has launched its ‘Everonn World' at Kukatpally in Hyderabad. It will provide a one-stop solution for the educational and training needs of students and institutions. It is part of the company's national rollout and will promote the Edupreneur Programme. The company wants to identify entrepreneurs willing to contribute to the growth of Indian education in their chosen geographies. Everonn World intends to provide products and services catering to pre-school, vocational education, training, institutional tie-ups (schools and colleges), university and management education, admission counselling, coaching, certification and testing. The education centre at Kukatpally was inaugurated by Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, President, Lok Satta and local legislator.

dr.jayaprakash narayan launches the 'education centre' of a company that shall make money through selling products and services to 'edupreneurs' i.e., people who run private educational institutions. what does he think of private 'edupreneurs' in school education, i wonder. because he can't really guarantee 'equal opportunities for growth to all, irrespective of caste, religion, gender, and financial status' (check his party's website) and promote private school education at the same time. that infuses hierarchy into school education, building an education system that mimics the caste system in structure and spirit. no one can 'guarantee equal opportunities for growth to all' through such a system.

but dr.narayan goes a step ahead and says:

Lok Satta government will work tirelessly to abolish caste within one generation.

abolish caste in one generation? how? this is how:

* School, College and University educational records will not refer to the caste of the individual, except in the case of beneficiaries from schemes pertaining to SC, ST and BC. 

* Lok Satta Government will ensure that students from all castes live together in hostels. All government constructions will ensure that people belonging to different castes stay together.

what will he do with all the unwritten records in all the savarna homes? will he go sit in their living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, backyards etc and hold dharnas, every day, and tell them to 'say no to caste'?

dr. jayaprakash narayan is one of those wise brahminical nationalists who instinctively know that it is the lower castes who thought up the caste system, originally. obviously, they wanted separate hostels some two thousand years later.

he was a part of babudom until recently but doesn't seem to remember that separate hostels for scs, sts and bcs are a fairly recent idea. they were established, perhaps around the same time that he was appointed an ias officer, because students from those communities did not get enough attention, or protection, in hostels where 'students from all castes lived together'. the second backward classes commission, or the mandal commission, and the national commission for sc/sts were are also instituted around the same time. again, for the same reasons, broadly: regular institutions (which catered to 'all castes') were failing to deliver justice and attention to the bcs, scs and sts. this happened around 30-32 years ago. or some 30-32 years after independence.

but he does remember that the first caste census, held more than a century ago, was a 'scheme of using caste and religion to accentuate differences among people and thereby contain the fervour of nationalism'.

so, the british also thought it up.

these are the kind of revolutionary minds in savarna 'civil society' that went to work on the rte. there's no way sc, st or obc kids are going to find their way into private schools through the promised quota of 25% for the 'poor'. that quota is going to knock some sense into the caste-ridden indian education system and make all indian schools 'pure' educational institutions, run by pure 'edupreneurs'. that would definitely ensure that no one one from any caste would go to separate hostels. it's time jayaprakash narayan and his pals like aruna roy etc thought up a right to work programme for all the sc, st, bc children who can't find any functioning government schools in the not so distant future.

the child 'martyrs' of telangana

this report in the times of india raises some disturbing questions:

Some 35 km onwards on the road is the mandal headquarters of Dubbaka and meandering another six kms on the country road (which seems to be remarkably good) we reach Chellapur village. It is here that a 16-year-old, class X student of the local school, Ramoji Swamy committed suicide for the sake of Telangana on Monday. Many locals surround us. “Why did this small boy take his life,” we ask. “For T-state,” say most of them. “The T-sentiment is very strong here. Every evening meetings are being held in Dubbaka to express these sentiments.” We ask: “Did Ramoji Swamy play an active role in these meetings?” The answer is that he used to go for the meetings, but was generally silent. But he was a supporter of the cause. “What happened on Monday that he took his life?” we ask. There is hushed silence. A boy standing there in an aside tells us: “Yes, everybody is saying that Ramoji committed suicide because of Telangana.” His manner convinces us that he wants to say something. But the dialogue cannot continue, because the boy’s mother standing at a distance shouts at him: “Go home. Go home.” The crowds collected are holding forth about the backwardness of Telangana in general and the village in particular.

“There are no jobs. I have passed Intermediate science group, but I don’t know what to do next. There are so many boys who have done B Ed but are jobless,” says Kondal Reddy, a youth. “There is no water here. Water has to be dug from borewells that have to be sunk at least 200 feet,” says another youth Durvasa Raju. “What do you talk about water for irrigation. There is no water for cleaning clothes and even for drinking,” says a wizened old man. He says his name is Poshetti and he is a washerman. Finding that everybody is assuming that Telangana will be the panacea, the medicine for all ills, we ask what if their assumptions turn out to be false. “We will ensure that this does not happen. The funds will be with our people. The Andhra people won’t be able to take it away,” say all of them in unison.

the journalists talk about panacea too. the report continues:

Our next stop is the Zilla Parishad High School of which Ramoji Swamy was a student. The boy had attended classes till recess on Monday and then returned home. After partaking his lunch, the boy consumed pesticide. “He left a note behind that he was taking his life for the sake of Telangana,” everybody we met told us. Head master of the school Bendram Ram Reddy withdraws in a shell the moment we start asking him questions.

Fear is written visibly on his face. On his side is sitting a senior bio-science teacher of the school Mohammed Farooq. On our insistence, he answers on behalf of the head master. “Yes we were very surprised to hear that this boy had committed suicide. He used to go for meetings and rallies but nothing more. He was a normal boy, average in all respects,” says Farooq. “But why did he take his life?” we persist in our questioning. “Well, it is all due to these TV channels you know. They go on beaming the T-issue and the same visuals all the time. In 1969 also there was an agitation. I was a school student then. But we were hardly affected because news never reached us. But now things are different,” Farooq asserts. Somebody pipes in that this is the second death in the village due to the T-tangle. Earlier this month (Feb 4) a class 8 student Akula Mounika suffered a heart attack after watching a T-related visual on TV, we are told. Numbed by shock, classmates Dubbaka Shweta and Kankanala Srikanth say, “Suicide is no solution. We will carry our fight through rallies and protest marches.”

We decide to meet Ramoji’s family members. On the way in this large village that lies sprawled what with a population of 5,000, we are beckoned by a man. “Sirs, you are coming all the way, but let me tell you this boy did not die because of Telangana. The T-sentiment is very very strong here. But he did not give up his life for this reason,” says the man bluntly but requests us to keep his identity secret.

The story he narrates bamboozles us completely. “He was a nice boy, but a few months ago he stole the stereo set that was attached to somebody else’s tractor. He was caught and warned by village elders. But last week he committed the crime again and was found out. This time, the village elders took an undertaking from his father and uncle that if any tractor stereo were found to be stolen they would have to pay up. The father gave an undertaking,” our source reveals. He adds: “But at the same time the village elders chastened the boy and so did his uncle and father. This was a day before the suicide. Shamed or whatever, he took his life. As far as the suicide note is concerned, it was put in his hand after he died,” our source concludes.

We now go to Ramoji’s house. Everybody is waiting for his body that has been taken for post-mortem. We find his father Pentachari and uncle Balarathnam. Both are sozzled. “Why did Ramoji commit suicide?” we ask. A man sitting closeby (also dead drunk) asks us sharply: “Don’t you know he died for Telangana?” The father and uncle begin weeping.

On the way back we decide to drop in at the police station in Dubbaka, the mandal headquarters. Outside the police station, there is a pandal. A few people are sitting, wearing garlands. They are on relay hunger strike for T-state. The policeman is quite frank: “What story did you hear - that the boy committed suicide for T? Well the actual story is.... (and he repeats the same story that our source told us).” The police official adds: “If you ask me on the record, I’ll say he died for T. Why should I contradict it? Everybody wants Telangana. So do I. If I contradict the story, I will have to face the wrath of the people. If Telangana comes, what’s the harm? We shall benefit.” He ventures more on his own: “That girl Mounika had a heart problem for long. Her death has nothing to do with Telangana.”

On the way we are thinking. By faking suicide cases, aren’t these local T-activists harming their own cause? After all this faking will be found out sooner or later. Then like the boy who cried wolf, people would start disbelieving the genuine cases of suicide for the T-cause like that of Siripuram Yadaiah who immolated himself in Osmania University last week.

both the suicides, in the journalists' view, were not for any grand cause. so, why do they think yadaiah was a genuine case? shaik ahmed ali isn't so sure (hat tip: kiran):

It happened once again.

On 20th February, a student Yadaiah attempted suicide by setting himself ablaze in the Osmania University campus in full public view. Minutes after he was shifted to the hospital, the Telangana agitators started waving his life-size photographs. Even copies of his 'suicide note' reached the scores of reporters covering the violence in the OU campus. While Yadaiah's love for Telangana is undisputable, I suspect whether he willingly attempted suicide.

At least I don't want to believe that Yadaiah's suicide bid was a spontaneous reaction. The authorities need to find answers for: who were all aware that he would attempt suicide; who were possessing the suicide note and why; when, how and who brought his life-size photographs in the campus and how the media representatives got access to his suicide note even before the police got it and why did he choose the place where the media cameras were present. The suicide bid was perfectly planned and timed in order to get maximum publicity. But who planned it?

So far, over a dozen students committed suicide 'demanding Telangana', but circumstantial evidences tell a different story. Almost all of them wrote similar text in their 'suicide notes' complaining of delay in formation of Telangana state. In all cases, media got access to the suicide note before the police got them. The authorities should find out if somebody was trying to exploit the sentiments of Telangana students by abetting them to commit suicide.

suicide, is among the top three leading causes of death among 15-24 year olds, in many countries. the recent spurt in telangana must be pulling it up to the top spot as the single leading cause of death among young people in the region. is someone trying to pull it up? the same people who don't find anything wrong in schoolkids committing suicide in large numbers? and for a grand political cause? like some kind of vultures, they seem too eager, and quick, to swoop down on these barely adolescent 'martyrs'.

on child soldiers, amnesty international says:

Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children under 18 have been affected by armed conflict.

They are recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a variety of other armed groups. Often they are abducted at school, on the streets or at home. Others enlist “voluntarily”, usually because they see few alternatives. Yet international law prohibits the participation in armed conflict of children aged under 18.

It means that in reality girls and boys illegally and under force, participate in combat where frequently they are injured or killed. Others are used as spies, messengers, porters, servants or to lay or clear landmines. Girls are at particular risk of rape and other sexual abuse.

Such children are robbed of their childhood and exposed to terrible dangers and to psychological and physical suffering.

they might not have been recruited into any armed group or militia, but they're child soldiers in many ways. how can they not be considered soldiers if they can be enthusiastically feted as martyrs, later? whether directly, or through other means, the separatists have been taking their campaign into schoolyards-- shouldn't they be accused of robbing the childhood of these soldiers, especially in many of the villages in the few districts in which the movement appears to be strong? and especially of obc, dalit, adivasi and muslim kids in government schools? the private schools where the children of the separatist leaders and ideologues go aren't touched, of course. ironically, many among these recruiters, i mean people like prof. kodandaram, haragopal etc., have worked as human rights' activists earlier. many lives ago, it seems like now.

this tyranny is okay- 3

The numbers consolidated at the government of India level show that there are only eight million children out of about 200 million children in the age group 6-14 years who do not go to school as on December 2004. The State Project Directors of SSA submitted this data. This means that only 4 per cent of all children are out of school according to the SSA estimate. Furthermore, the total number of children accounted for by the SSA does not match the number of children enumerated in the 2001 Census of India. For example, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, the SSA has declared that there are 1.53-crore children of school going age while the corresponding figure according to census data is 1.77-crore. The figures simply do not add up.

Where have these missing children gone and who accounts for them? [emphasis mine].

i'd pointed out in this post, the difference in figures published by two different agencies, the sarva shiksha abhiyaan (SSA) and the national commission for the protection of child rights (ncpcr), on the number of out-of-school kids in the country and even the number of kids in the country. now in the nearly three year old article i've quoted, shantha sinha, child rights activist and magsaysay award winner puts across her own doubts on the issue: The figures simply do not add up.

more than two million children missing in one state (discovered through piecing together gaps in official estimates), how many more were/are missing nationwide? read the article to discover how many ways in which the state, as dr.sinha says at the end of the article, pretends:

If only the policy-makers and those in the helm of bureaucracy are genuinely interested in the protection of children’s rights they would understand the indispensability of correctness of information on children, work towards ensuring that all of them come to schools and not just pretend that every child is already in school.

why does no liberal journalist ask the government on how many children are actually are out of school now?

here, siddharth varadarajan talks about how the current government won't abandon welfarism. what's welfarism? not, according to him, the rent-generating, corporate handout-driven route which the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance followed to disastrous political effect from 1998 to 2004 but an expenditure-driven expansionary fiscal strategy with the emphasis on expanding the consumption entitlements of the poor.

that's what the left liberal in india is really about: scoring points. if the welfarism he is gloating over doesn't include concrete measures to address such issues as primary education or health, two of the most basic concerns of the poor in india, how sincere should we consider it? are we to assume he thinks the new consumption entitlements of the poor will enable them to buy education for their children from the market? why does the state's great disinterest in such basic entitlements as primary education not bother mr.varadarajan?

and what is it about the nrega that makes these warped liberals go so weak at the knees and lose perspective altogether? the nrega until now hasn't ever gone beyond 2-3% of the total annual budget of the government of india. can these 2-3% expenditures endow 70% of the population with anything that even remotely resembles real consumption entitlements?

this tyranny is okay- 2

according to the 2001 census 8,71,26,075 children of age 5-14 (of a total 25,31,63,648 children), or 34.4% of the total, were out of school. this figure (according to projections) fell to 4,32,74,861 (of 24,17,59,000 children of same age range), or 17.9% in 2006 [from page 6 of this paper: Abolition of Child Labour in India, Strategies for the Eleventh Five Year Plan submitted by National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to the Planning Commission, India].

what could've happened in 5 years to bring down the number of children out of school by half? the ruling classes chant a three word mantra as an answer: sarva shiksha abhiyan.

could ssa really have worked the miracle of bringing down out-of-school kids by nearly half, just a couple of years after its launch? that's what an economic times article (dated november, 2006) scanned and offered as success story on the ssa website says: Out-of-school-kids nearly halve (by urmi a. goswami). let me quote a couple of lines from the article:

The number of out-of-school children in the age group of 6-14 is down from 1.34 crore in 2005 to 70.56 lakh in the current year. With this the national average of out-of-school children is down from 6.94% to 3.59% in the current year. There are some 19.63 crore children between the age group of 6 to 14 years. Over the last four years, since the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was launched, the number of out-of-school children has been gradually reducing from 3.23 crore in 2001 to 70.56 lakh in march 2006.

because the ssa has proudly pasted this badly scanned news story on its website, it obviously approves of those figures. notice the difference in figures quoted by the first government agency (NCPCR) and the second (SSA)?

*out-of-school kids, according to ncpcr, were 8.71 crore in 2001.
*out-of-school kids, according to the article endorsed by the ssa, were 3.23 crore in 2001.
*out-of-school kids, according to ncpcr, were 4.32 crore (estimated) in 2006.
*out-of-school kids, according to the article endorsed by the ssa, were 70.56 lakh in 2006.

they don't seem to agree, do they? how about these figures?

*total number of kids between the ages 5-14 in india, according to ncpcr, were 24.17 crore in 2006 (estimated).
*total number of kids between the ages 6-14 in india, according to the article endorsed by the ssa, were 19.63 crore.

the ssa seems to have not only nearly halved the number of out-of-school kids in india it seems to have reduced their total population too by nearly one-fifth!

except for the census figures of 2001 on the number of children in india, i think all the other figures are wide off the mark. the ncpcr figures seem to be slightly closer to the truth. i think the number of out-of-school kids is definitely more than the 4.32 crore estimated by the ncpcr. most of those estimates follow the enrollment figures and the discrepancy between enrollment and attendance figures as estimated by other researchers is significantly high. according to Shelley Seale (The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India), the number of child labourers (i won't call them out-of-school kids because i don't think they're having fun out of school, even if the goi thinks otherwise) in india would be 100 million. and i agree with that figure.

the ssa is like the village deities of rural india or the godmen of the cities: they work magic when you're not looking, or they work magic when you're not ready to look (because you're too desperate). like many of those believers, the sainaths of india, you'll notice, also keep their eyes closed, mostly.

update: forgot to add- also on the ssa website, a report of a survey (conducted in 2005) which agrees with the economic times article on the figures.

this tyranny is okay

Any criticism of the market as God these past two decades led to being branded a heretic. The market had all the answers. There was no miracle it could not perform. Some, like Swaminathan Aiyer, argued that markets alone could save the environment. Others, like Time magazine, asserted that hunger was but a function of anti-market systems. Want jobs? Leave it to the market. The market wasn’t just good for democracy. It was Democracy. This was the baloney of the last 15-20 years. There were other possible positions. Such as that you might need the market. As a tool, not as a tyranny. As just one instrument amongst many, not as an all encompassing ideology. But that would have been blasphemy. [italics mine]

p.sainath in the essay 'The globalisation of inequality'.

the indian left liberal, or whatever anyone whose politics hovers around the same concerns and interests as sainath voices would like to call himself, is quite a character. he would look away when the market is allowed free play in schools and health, but would object strongly if airlines or hotels owned by the government are privatized. it's okay to throw small change at farmers to get them to ensure your food security, but it's irrelevant how big a role nonexistent public healtcare (or expensive private healthcare) plays in driving farmers to suicide. in a country where the unorganized sector forms 93% of the workforce (almost half of those workers, i think, have to look for a new job, if you could dignify the worst kind of manual labour with that title, every day or week or month or couple of months) the best kind of social security he can offer is a job scheme that involves worse than the worst kind of manual labour (because it offers no scope for learning about new tools or technologies, no training or retraining and not even minimum wages most times) and reaches not more than 2 to 5 percent of that 93%,..the point i am driving at now (as i did many times earlier), is that that the indian liberal is not a mere hypocrite. he is much more lethal.

one reads swaminathan aiyar and understands what kind of people he's concerned about. swaminathan aiyar recommends a bigger role for private players in schools, swaminathan aiyar thinks the family is the best social security an indian worker needs, swaminathan doesn't seem to care about public healthcare because i've never seen a column by him on the subject.

swaminathan aiyar likes private schools because the india he lives in doesn't need government schools (except of the kendriya vidyalaya kind), swaminathan aiyar doesn't care about social security because his kind of indians mostly work in the organized sector where they have job security, pensions and benefits and insurance coverage (insurance penetration is less than 5% in india- most of it is bought by aiyar's india). and they also have urban and rural property-for them private healthcare can never cost the earth because they can always hike its price.

what does sainath think of schools, social security and public health? except in a very general sort of way i don't think he has ever wandered deep into those mostly rural hells- like swaminathan aiyar, he doesn't seem to care. i suppose the tyranny of the market can be an effective tool in those areas?

kapil sibal seems to have stirred no one except a few trade unions.

a naive idea- 1

i think, many times, what's the point of elections anyway?

i like this dream: all children of all castes, creeds going to the same school. of schools that have not just blackboards but computers and stuff. that have fans and lights and playgrounds and teachers. libraries and internet. that have girls' cricket teams and budding filmmakers. and toilets and clean water. schools that look and feel great to children- excite them as much as new games or movies or books or insects and grass and a great number of other things that we know nothing about do. schools that communities can take pride in.

some might tell you that this is not a practical idea. we don't have the money, villages (and cities) don't have the roads or electricity, teachers hate going to villages to teach, poor parents can't afford to send working children to school.

if that's not a practical idea, what's india? and what's the point of this elections anyway?

in the next three years, india is going to spend around rs. 5,00,000- 6,00,000 crores on defense- much more than what's needed to build those schools. what's foolish about spending a crore each on a school in every one of the 6,00,000 villages in the country? it'd actually cost much less because most of the existing schools only need to be refurbished or expanded.

but defense is a practical idea. holding onto kashmir is a practical idea. and war with pakistan is always a practical idea.

villages don't have the roads or electricity? bunker roy of barefoot college tells you what can be done for $400,000 a year:

For the same amount of money, one could electrify 15 whole villages of 800 houses annually with solar power; collect 20 million liters of rainwater in 40 remote rural schools; or run more than 300 night schools for a year for over 4,000 dropped-out children anywhere in the world. For the same amount 100,000 families living below the starvation line of 50 cents a day could receive two square meals a day in 50 villages. When that sort of money is available, it is foolish and absurd to spend it on one village.

equipping a school with solar electricity wouldn't need more than $ 5,000 (assuming each school needs as much electricity as ten homes) or $50,000 (assuming each school needs as much electricity as a hundred homes). that'd be less than 2-20 lakh rupees? that'd also solve the problem of water. what i'm trying to say is- all these problems can be solved. i mean in three years (even without cutting into the holy defense budget).

what's more difficult to solve? problems like teachers who won't go to villages, parents who don't/can't send their children to school, a bureaucracy that doesn't care about schools etc., are those the real problems, those issues much bandied about by experts? the iits and the schools with air-conditioning and french tell you india is a stupid dream, a mere slogan. that's the real problem.

[this post by space bar made me think]

how does this make sense?

nearly half of urban india wants to settle down in the u.s., says a survey conducted a couple of years ago. about 40% of india's farmers, according to another survey conducted a little earlier, would 'quit farming' given a choice.

the respondents in the first survey were people who belonged to 'lower middle classes and above'. you'll agree, india has been kind to those people: investing in their education & training etc., and offering them a far better quality and quantity of public services than those available to the rest of india. which helped them get better jobs.

and the finance minister has announced, a couple of days ago, a few more iits and iims for them. to improve their chances of securing american visas?

he has also announced increased spending on the bharat nirman programme and the nrega- most of that increased expenditure will finds its way back to the cities, of course. this would also improve the farmers' chances of moving up? to become wage labourers?

choice: the first category of respondents have it and the second don't. one would think the best way of creating choice for the farmers (or their children, actually) would be: investing in their education & training etc., and offering them a far better quality and quantity of public services (as available to the first class of respondents). so that they could move on to better jobs too (and to america, later?).

why doesn't that happen? one of the key elements is education. if the next generation of the second category of respondents, the farmers' children, have to move beyond farming, or at least get a fair chance at thinking of moving beyond agriculture, they will all need access to decent school education. the kind of education that's mostly unavailable to them now.

do you get any sense that the finance minister, or the central government, was thinking about that when he was making ritualistic allocations to that ugly, paternalistic sarva shiksha abhiyaan and grand plans for new iits while preparing this year's budget? did you get any sense that the issue seriously occupied his mind?

did you get that sense last year or the year before that or the year....?

the layers above, around and apart from the creamy layer

a commenter on this post argues that reserving seats in kendriya vidyalayas would ensure that more obc students would get into iits and iims etc:

The policies I talked of addresses both caste and deprivation while recognizing that they are to a reasonable extent inter twined.

I said, reservations in KVs along with financial help for the reserved category students for tutorial classes so that they would be in a position to compete.

yes, i'm quite sure more obc students would get into iits/iims if those policies are followed. problem solved. whose problem? a ruling class that wishes to tell the world that the nation it's building is inclusive would definitely need this representation to prove its credentials.

does it solve the obcs' problem? no, it doesn't recognize their problem (or the dalits' problem or the muslims' problem). and their problem is this: a state that promotes hierarchy, separation and division. in other words, institutions such as the iits and the kendriya vidyalayas themselves are a part of the problem. this is how hierarchy, separation and division operate in the indian educational system- let's look at the schools first:

* private schools
* government aided schools
* government schools

those are the three broad categories of schools in india- do you see the separation? private schools, on an average, produce better results than government aided schools and government schools. so the rich and the middle classes go to the private schools, and some government aided schools but the poor mostly go to the government schools, or more likely, drop out of government schools.

but almost 80% of indians go to the same government schools! no, they don't. look at the broad divisions within government schools:

* central schools
* state/local government run schools
* special schools for certain categories of students from different segments of society- like dalits, adivasis, backward classes etc.,

don't they all deliver the same kind of quality? no, again. a hierarchy operates here too: the kendriya vidyalayas access the best kinds of intake and resources, the navodaya schools cater to the most fortunate among rural students, the residential schools for the dalits/adivasis etc., offer students from those sections..the best, but not adequate, deal they can get from government schools.

on the surface, all this might seem very natural: do i expect a liberal democracy that has chosen a mixed economy model (because it believes in economic freedom) not to have a class system? and think of the geographic spread and linguistic diversity of the country.

a class system in which children of public sector workers and agricultural workers go to different kinds of schools run by the same government? why? we can't say the government is a business organization like hindustan lever, say, which produces different brands of soap, or education, for different income segments. is geography an explanation? many public sector units are located in remote, isolated areas, separated from other residential neighbourhoods so they need their own schools. that explains separation and not the hierarchy. but does geography explain this separation: kids from the same neighbourhood go to different schools- a government school located in the same neighbourhood and a private school several kilometers away. hierarchy, denoted by different income groups, might explain that situation but it doesn't solve the problem of separation. where everyone goes to the same rural school, you notice divisions in seating arrangements in classes, some kids sit on the floor while others occupy the benches. you notice that persistent effort to divide students in all rural government schools: different seating arrangements, cooking and dining arrangements and even teaching practices. and in more prosperous villages, recognized or unrecognized private schools suddenly spring up to offer a welcome opportunity for the prosperous to separate their kids from the hoi polloi.

a class system? hierarchy, separation and division are the chief elements of the caste system- they work together.
but you might not notice all three elements operating at the same time- one or a combination of any two elements might be more visible. you think the kendriya vidyalayas are separated from other government schools for valid, secular reasons- but you'll not notice that the public school system has divided students according to their assigned capabilities, just like in the caste system, where in the name of division of labour, different groups are assigned different occupations and statuses. so the kendriya vidyalayas get more funds, resources and attention (from the central government itself) but the village school- most times, it'd be very difficult to find the certain babu who runs it from the certain block, district, department, ministry- gets very little. so the kvs rank higher in this caste hierarchy.

the indian education system is the way it is because all the key players in this system- the government, the teachers, the bureaucracy, the private schools, the parents- like it that way. the lower castes are part of only one important constituent, or key player, in this system: the parents. and here too, their economic and social incapacities impose harsh limits on their role.

kendriya vidyalayas work well because the kids are from upper caste backgrounds. government schools work well (but not equally well for everyone) in villages where upper caste parents still have a stake in their performance- in prosperous villages in which they can afford private schooling, government schools stop working for everyone else. actually all schools in the village stop working for everyone else. and in cities, where you think caste doesn't exist (because separation and division are not so visible), private schools don't cater to higher and middle income groups, they actually cater to different caste groups because the income group-caste overlap is very real. why do you think the government (at different levels) allows the proliferation of private schools in cities where it'd be much easier to monitor government schools? after all, government resides in the cities, right?

schools represent a great opportunity for government and society: they could just pick up the duster, and wipe caste off children's minds. the right setting to begin a sincere revolution. but all that's been done until now, and is being proposed, mimics the caste system.

all the key players i mentioned earlier are a part of the carefully orchestrated mess that is the indian schooling system. and there is manu behind this madness. at one point of time, the government controlled almost 90% of the production of goods and services that you used every day: right from the bed you got off in the morning to the the radio and the radio station you listened to when you retired in the evening. and most of this control was very direct: a huge number of products/services were reserved for production in the public sector. and those that weren't, were produced by licensees. and even during those days it never occurred to the government that schools deserved its undivided attention? that in a country divided in a thousand ways, vertically and horizontally, education was the best glue to fix those divisions? why? because those who ran the system never had to shoulder the burden of caste?

and now, in the new india, when the country is so free that an eminent professor in the creamiest of creamy layer educational institutions feels liberalized enough to abuse, in print, certain lower castes in india who also pay taxes that pay for his salary, are we supposed to believe that it is all the lower castes' fault that the schools are in a mess? and the money and attention that should have gone into those schools has gone to build a creamy layer of institutions and reinforce a caste system that ...can only breed bigots like him?

a cry of despair

The continued dismal literacy rate among Adivasis and Dalits is a matter of embarrassment for the leaders [who think themselves as rulers] of India. The overwhelmingly Upper-caste bureaucracy, responsible for taking education and other development measures to the marginalised, see little sense in doing so. They perceive the spread of education as akin to the erosion of their privileges. There are micro-level studies available that hint at the systematic evolution of a culture that denies development to the poor and “lower castes”.

that's from an article (emphasis mine) by arun kumar, general manager, youth, child rights & you, that i found at pritam p.hans' blog. the article goes on to say:

In the field of education, even stronger observations can be made. According to the Seventh All India Education Survey (2002), 47 per cent habitations do not have a primary school. Who might be staying in these areas? Only 20 per cent of habitations have a secondary school. Who might be staying in these areas? Right from the start, the Indian state policies have had a special predilection for Higher education at the cost of primary and elementary education.

The Budgetary allocation for education has never gone past 4.27 per cent of the GDP mark (2000-01). However, the best outlay for elementary education till date has been at 1.19 per cent of the GDP. What it means is that the priority of taking education to those who were historically beyond its periphery has always been lower than catering to those who were already in its fold.

read the article for more plainspeak on sarva shiksha abhiyaan etc. reflect on the attitude of the ruling classes who think high school graduates or worse make good enough teachers for the dalits and other marginalized sections of indian society. doesn't that remind you of the attitude of those who promote 'different schools for different classes'?

i searched for the original article (this seems to be an edited version) but couldn't find it. and neither, unfortunately,.could i find any other article by mr.arun kumar.

there's another child..and another

there was this kid next door. i never saw him, but i knew he was there because one could hear his mother yelling at him once in a while. more during what's called the exams season. one day, last year, he hanged himself (i learnt that later, from another neighbour). i still hear the mother, once in a while. she has another child.

the movie taare zameen par has become so popular, i guess more kids would be named ishaan now. and more parents would send their kids to boarding schools that promise to offer special treatment.