Shreekant Sambrani: Gauri's plight or country's crisis?

Is our pursuit of social justice fostering injustice""howsoever inadvertent""for some?

My cousin Mohan called me last week, barely able to contain his delight as he told me that his daughter Gauri was selected for the M S (general surgery) course through a national competitive examination. The joy was understandable, as she had waited three long years after completing her internship and trying in vain to gain admission into a post-graduate programme through the state-controlled process characterised by various quotas.

Gauri faced various handicaps, but academic excellence was not one of them. She qualified for admission into two government medical colleges and one private one for the free seats after her enviable HSC results in 1998. She did very well in her medical education. Her teachers assured her that a brilliant career awaited her.

They had not reckoned on her being born a brahmin. Her close family has known barely middle class existence for at least the last four generations. Mohan, an engineer with the state electricity board close to retirement, offered to liquidate his provident fund to get her admitted into one of the myriad diploma courses, when she could not make it to a proper post-graduate programme.

Gauri, made of sterner stuff, politely refused her father's sole nest egg. She finally appeared in the national competitive examination, securing a rank of 242 in the country, which enabled her to get both the course and the institution of her choice. One of her old classmates, who was ranked 4,000 in the state, would also be joining her in the programme through a quota seat, which was not subject to the competitive process.

When I talked to her, Gauri was neither exultant nor bitter. She did say, though, that this state of affairs leads to wrecking friendships and dividing the otherwise happy student community into warring camps. She said that children of sugar barons who otherwise flaunt their shahannav-kuli Maratha elite status, routinely claim to be kunbis, who are OBCs, when they seek admissions into educational institutions.

Gauri's grandfather, an average student, sailed through Grant Medical College 70 odd years ago and settled to being a municipal health officer. Her aunt, a much better student, also studied in public undergraduate and post-graduate medical colleges. Gauri, the best pupil in three generations, has had all these problems. She quietly said that hers is the last generation to have received professional education in a public institution. The next one will either have to buy seats or go abroad. And who is to say that she is not right?

To talk of Gauri's plight, much less highlight it, is fraught with danger in the present context. Politically, any dialogue is impossible, since a crude and most likely not very effective solution to the very complex and age-old problem of social justice in an non-egalitarian society has been grabbed as a panacea for all electoral maladies. Even among intellectuals, a simple call for a balanced discussion of the issues involved would invite opprobrium.

Intelligent discussion is circumscribed by what sociologist Peter Ronald deSouza calls a "if you are not with us, you are against us" syndrome. Some thinkers have begun to believe in a simplistic identity between reservations, social justice and empowerment, in a manner that is no different from that of vote-bank conscious politicians. Christopher Jaffrelot, on whom we Indians have conferred iconic status, when asked to comment on the reasoned stance some papers have taken on the issue, essentially waffled in his reply, but did say that "the symbolic impact of [reservations] in terms of empowerment was very important."

Empowerment to me is a win-win and not a zero-sum concept. One cannot become empowered by disempowering someone else. That is the way to the ultimate disempowerment of both.

I am deeply troubled by the corrosive impact of casteism. I yield to none as far as my belief in and commitment to social justice and egalitarianism are concerned. I believe we need to evolve a nuanced affirmative action policy at the earliest. As this paper has editorially commented recently, the straightforward solution would be to increase the supply of higher education opportunities. It is not easy, but it resolves all issues and leaves no unsavoury after-effects. Many other experiments are worthy of replication.

For example, IIM Kozhikode created a one-year support programme, taught by its own faculty, for the SC/ST candidates who were to be admitted under reservations, but had poorer performance in the entrance process. When they entered the regular post-graduate programme after this preparation, their performance was generally satisfactory. A number of US schools have tried variants of this approach when they undertook minority candidate recruitment, again with commendable results. Can we not at least study and debate the merits of such approaches, before rushing headlong into one of the most divisive decisions of our time?

Mstislav Rostropovich, the legendary cellist and conductor who died last week, said in connection with the ban imposed on Aleksandr Solzhenytsin, "Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him." We would do well to heed these words when we face such major issues.

I agree with Messrs Arjun Singh and Anbumani Ramadoss that the discriminated sections do not have to wait. But does that mean that Gauri has to wait three years or more? Is the palliative adding to the original problem? As I congratulate Gauri, I find myself bothered by the fact that our pursuit of social justice seems to be creating injustice for some, however inadvertent it may be.