Does merit have any meaning?
I was forced to write this blog because of HRD ministry's decision of imposing 49.5% reservation in all universities across India. Come to think of it, the whole higher education system in India is going down the drain. There is a whole generation who thinks that it is not worth studying beyond 10+2 as that alone can guarantee a job in a call center. We have a sports minister who thinks that mathematics should be optional. There is a serious lack of talent in India right now. It is true for software and I am sure it is true for other industries as well that it is really difficult to find good candidates to fill vacant positions. And we aspire to be a "Knowledge based society". How ironical!
I do not know about IIMs because I never went there, but I can talk about IITs because I was a student of IIT Bombay from 1993 to 1997. The students at IITs are the best because of a gem of an examination called JEE, but the standard of the institute is not the greatest among the world. There is a serious shortage of staff at IITs. All steps have been taken to fill these positions, but to no avail. This means that the IITs are nowhere close to a US university when it comes to original research and to prove that we just need to do count the number of research papers published by post graduate and Phd students at IITs. We have never tried to understand why a B.Tech. student does so well when he/she get a scholarship at a US university compared to his classmate of almost the same calibre who does an M.Tech. at one of the IITs. This M.Tech student effortlessly sails through the entire course, at the top of his/her class, joins a job and thats it...
There is a lot of difference in quality of students between various colleges and this present government is doing all it can to bridge the gap. Just that the path they have chosen to do this seems a little weird. Instead of bringing up the standard of other institutes, it is bent on lowering the standard of IITs. I only talked about general category students in the preceding paragraph. Reserved category students can not even cope up with the pressure and a lot of them just drop out. Has any survey been done to find out how many reserved category students join IITs, at what grade did they pass out, where they are working now and why should their children get the advantage of reservation again?
The government seriously and honestly needs to reconsider its priorities. The people who really need help are the deprived sections of our society - the poor farmers in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana who are committing suicides because they are up to their neck in debt and are not able to find buyers for their produce. They cannot even send their children to school, let alone dreaming of a college education. Are they going to benefit even one bit by this decision of increasing reservation in IITs? This deal, in its present form, is good only for the kid of a rich politician who is really bad in studies and would rank nowhere if it were for fair competition. Even if we do have to live with this reservation for now, there has to be some schedule when these classes come out of backward status. Other Backward Classes --> Almost Backward Classes --> Not Backward Classes. The politicians cannot keep giving reservation to the entire community/caste till the last individual is deemed backward.
Guys, India is not shining yet. We are celebrating too soon. The middle class, whose purchasing power powers our economy to 8% growth, would not be able to sustain this level of spending for long. Very soon, we will be the "Knowledge based society that could not be". And very soon, we would be back to stage where we were in 70s and 80s of the last century, defined again by an insulting phrase - "Hindu Rate of Growth".
I do not know about IIMs because I never went there, but I can talk about IITs because I was a student of IIT Bombay from 1993 to 1997. The students at IITs are the best because of a gem of an examination called JEE, but the standard of the institute is not the greatest among the world. There is a serious shortage of staff at IITs. All steps have been taken to fill these positions, but to no avail. This means that the IITs are nowhere close to a US university when it comes to original research and to prove that we just need to do count the number of research papers published by post graduate and Phd students at IITs. We have never tried to understand why a B.Tech. student does so well when he/she get a scholarship at a US university compared to his classmate of almost the same calibre who does an M.Tech. at one of the IITs. This M.Tech student effortlessly sails through the entire course, at the top of his/her class, joins a job and thats it...
There is a lot of difference in quality of students between various colleges and this present government is doing all it can to bridge the gap. Just that the path they have chosen to do this seems a little weird. Instead of bringing up the standard of other institutes, it is bent on lowering the standard of IITs. I only talked about general category students in the preceding paragraph. Reserved category students can not even cope up with the pressure and a lot of them just drop out. Has any survey been done to find out how many reserved category students join IITs, at what grade did they pass out, where they are working now and why should their children get the advantage of reservation again?
The government seriously and honestly needs to reconsider its priorities. The people who really need help are the deprived sections of our society - the poor farmers in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana who are committing suicides because they are up to their neck in debt and are not able to find buyers for their produce. They cannot even send their children to school, let alone dreaming of a college education. Are they going to benefit even one bit by this decision of increasing reservation in IITs? This deal, in its present form, is good only for the kid of a rich politician who is really bad in studies and would rank nowhere if it were for fair competition. Even if we do have to live with this reservation for now, there has to be some schedule when these classes come out of backward status. Other Backward Classes --> Almost Backward Classes --> Not Backward Classes. The politicians cannot keep giving reservation to the entire community/caste till the last individual is deemed backward.
Guys, India is not shining yet. We are celebrating too soon. The middle class, whose purchasing power powers our economy to 8% growth, would not be able to sustain this level of spending for long. Very soon, we will be the "Knowledge based society that could not be". And very soon, we would be back to stage where we were in 70s and 80s of the last century, defined again by an insulting phrase - "Hindu Rate of Growth".
