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This week in Kolkata the reservation riots are continuing in our health sector. Junior doctors of state-run government hospitals are on the rampage, paralyzing the traffic of Downtown Kolkata, refusing to attend to patients in the general wards and even maintaining skeleton staff at the emergency departments although the Honorable Supreme Court of India has passed orders that no patient in a critical condition can be refused medical attention in the emergency departments.

We would not enter into the polemics of the reservation debate in this week’s column but would like to attract the attention of our readers to the fact that the public heath sector is still very much vulnerable in a developing country like India where substantial pockets of citizens are yet to uniformly access basic amenities of life such as safe drinking water, sanitation, electricity, roads, safe housing, nutritious food, primary education and emergency medical services.

The Press has recently published multiple lead stories on the reservation issue but a couple of human interest items have merited our attention for obvious reasons. One story dealt with the death of a young boy in the hands of a young girl when the latter hit the former during a scuffle to grab leftover items of food from a wedding ceremony.

The girl even inquired about the health of the boy when she was being taken to the juvenile corrective home the next morning to do time there and finally develop into a professional criminal. A monk wrote a letter to a vernacular newspaper reacting to this incident, and wondered about the country’s progress since Independence in 1947.

Such incidents have to be studied in perspective in order to arrive at certain concrete lessons about our life and times. An old man has single-handedly dug a pond in his village during the last seven years, using only a hand-held digging equipment. His motivation was his son’s death seven years back when the young man was shot dead during a crossfire involving rival criminal gangs of the locality.

The old man’s son died while begging for water to quench his thirst bit nobody helped him. The father was not informed in time and it was too late when he arrived at the scene. This led him to dig the pond alone while braving the blazing Indian sun and the torrential rains. The news story described his act as the elevation of a common man to the greatness of human achievement.

These incidents open our eyes and awake us to the realities of everyday life. We can better relate to the crisis concerning reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes to be introduced in our institutions like IITs and IIMs and Medical Colleges. Medical students and others have formed an interest group called the Youth for Equality to bring pressure upon the United Progressive Alliance at New Delhi.

It is a fact that political parties do not ordinarily advocate for reservation on economic grounds alone. No political outfit has yet come up with any concerted plan of action in activist terms to support reservation on financial considerations. The Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi used to provide students with merit-cum-means scholarships in order to encourage meritorious young men and women from an underprivileged background to pursue higher education.

Political masters should realize that pursuing vote bank politics is not always a wise course of action in the greater interests of the country as a whole and students in particular. All this rhetoric about correcting historical wrongs committed by the higher castes against the lower castes (who were often considered to be untouchable sections of the society) and ensuring social justice is nothing but expanding and institutionalizing pockets of political influence in sectoral terms.

The Government of India should first come up with a sound social development policy to introduce reservations in jobs and educational institutions on merit-cum-means basis. Otherwise caste divisions would continue to deepen and threaten the very community fabric of our social institutions. This is a Pandora’s Box that should not be toyed with by short-sighted politicians.

Kolkata has also been a part of all this organized lawlessness that is continuing in reaction against reservations in medical colleges and institutions of higher education. The anomaly in India is that our priorities of development are tragically lopsided. The State is hell bent upon sponsoring free and easily available higher education to all and sundry while nobody seems to care about the state of primary education.

Higher education is not for all. Students with inadequate merit may be guided early in their careers to opt for vocation or technical education that would create a rich pool of well-trained professional resources in the country. It is perhaps a fact that the minister who has supported reservation for medical students would think twice before allowing himself to be treated by an SC or ST doctor simply because it may play upon his mind that such a physician has studied medicine on the basis of his or her social background and not on merit.

The above cannot be misconstrued as our lack of sympathy for the backward sections of society. What we are advocating in this week’s column is the need for a level playing field where everyone should have equal opportunities and resources. This can only happen by introducing economic reservations and financial support at the level of primary education so that young men and women can compete on the basis of their merit later on in their careers.

The relative advantages and disadvantages of background can be corrected to some extent by the States financial sponsorship. We should not read about students who cannot pursue medical careers due to lack of money. But the debate should continue to explore better ideas.   

May 28, 2006

Top | Kolkata Diary

The Week of May 28, 2006     
Arjun Singh's Politics: Reservation and the Politics of Reservation! by Rajinder Puri
Congress Government's Two-Year Report Card : 3/10 by Dr. Subhash Kapila 
Schizoid America Tightens Indian Puppet's Loose Screw  by Gaurang Bhatt, MD  
Roots of Terrorism by V. Sundaram  
Can Non-Violence Still Solve the Problems of Today? by TA Ramesh
Andaman Faces Kargil-type of Invasion by MH Ahsan   
Quota Raj : A La Jallianwala by V. Sundaram   
Reservations and Rebellions by Dr. Prasenjit Maiti
Internet Bhagawan by J. Ajithkumar    
TV Invasion : An Addiction to Resist! by Naira Yaqoob 
Dilemma of India's Distant Education System by Dr. Prasenjit Maiti 
Wild Flowers of Tibet A Photo Essay by Kana Talukder
Giants of the Cold by VK Joshi 
Because There is a Cause by M. Qaiser and P. Mohan Chandran
Good Night, Sweet Dreams by Garima Gupta 
Ah, Newlyweds… Then Reality Sets In by Gary Direnfeld 
Have Two by Monisha Sen 
Healthy Kids, Fatigued Moms by Yvonne Barlow
Theatre Therapy for the Disabled by Neeta Lal 
New Peaceniks by Manjri Sewak 
Beyond the Caricature by Gautam Bhan 
A Very Good Woman to Know by Malvika Kaul 
An Intellectual A Short Story by NS Murty
My Dates with Dentists by PGR Nair  
Last Page of a Forbidden Diary by Suseela Pattamatta 
Mujhko NRI Bana De by Usha Kakkar 
Heritage Cuisine by Vikram Karve 
When I Stole from School by Arya Bhushan 
Virtualization by Ruchi Gupta