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This sterile 27 per cent debate

This sterile 27 per cent debate

Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: April 1, 2007
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/story/27204.html

Introduction: If there were enough colleges, we would not be discussing caste quotas and the Supreme Court would not need to waste its time questioning the basis of a caste census done in 1931

Delighted though I am that the Supreme Court kicked the government in the butt over educational quotas last week, may I remind you that the issue is not quotas but education? The issue is the abysmal failure of the Indian state on the educational front, not merit or the absence of it.

In the 27 per cent debate started by that old cynic, Arjun Singh, too often have we forgotten this. Too often have we forgotten that what handicaps underprivileged children in India is not their caste but the inability of the state to provide them with decent primary and secondary education, without which they have no chance of getting into IITs, IIMs or institutions of higher learning of any kind.

To emphasise this let me describe for you a school I recently visited in an Uttar Pradesh village less than 50 km from Delhi. It consisted of a collection of rooms built around a barren field. Neither aesthetic nor academic considerations had been kept in mind in its construction, so the general impression was not of a place of learning but of a village godown.

The classrooms had dirt floors, so clouds of dust were a permanent fixture and crude wooden planks served as desks and chairs. How can we begin to discuss so grand an idea as learning in such a place? How can children who are taught in such a school hope to compete with those who have played with computers in the kindergartens of Delhi and Mumbai? And, what has any of this to do with caste?

The reason caste has been made the only issue by our fossilised and intellectually backward minister for human resource development is because he seeks to divert attention from his total failure to improve higher education. He knows that our colleges and universities are dying for want of funds. He knows that fees need to be raised and that private money and a system of endowments is necessary if these institutions are to be saved from certain death, but he does nothing because he is a politician of the old school.

Politicians like him thrive in an atmosphere of control and patronage and they have seen their powers slip away as state controls have been weakened with the end of the license-quota raj. So he clings to one of the last bastions where this political philosophy continues to flourish - education.

And because the debate has got stuck on whether other backward caste students should be entitled to 27 per cent reserved seats in state-run colleges, we do not ask the more important questions. Why is there a shortage of colleges in the first place? Why do we not have a thousand more medical schools? Why do we not have thousands more IITs and IIMs? Why is the private sector not allowed to invest in building them if the state does not have the money? Why is there a single AICTE to regulate every technical college in the country?

If there were enough colleges, we would not be discussing caste quotas and the Supreme Court would not need to waste its time questioning the basis of a caste census done in 1931. What is the government going to do now? Will it be able to conduct a new caste based census by August, when it has to report back to the Supreme Court?

Why are we wasting time on such stupidities when what we need is for the state to either deliver on the education front or allow someone else a chance. This column has suggested before that if the state cannot run schools and colleges as they should be run then it is time we considered privatising these institutions. Education is too important a subject to be left in the hands of politicians who are more interested in making money out of building contracts than building schools for the sake of learning.

The prime minister likes to remind us that the 21st century is going to be India's century. With the largest number of young people in the world this is definitely possible, but if there is one thing that will hold us back, it is education. If we fail to build the institutions needed to give Indian children learning that goes beyond basic literacy, we are doomed.

There is a Knowledge Commission report that says this, there are senior officials who say it privately, but for some reason the prime minister and his boss are not listening. Is it because of those dreary old Marxists again? If it is, then it is time that Sonia Gandhi or the prime minister finally told them to shut up and confine their energies to solving their own problems in West Bengal.

Meanwhile, three cheers for the Supreme Court.

tavleensingh@hotmail.com


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