As a young professional upon qualifying extremely competitive exams you take your few steps in this competitive world; then changes take place beyond your control, which bring unhealthy performance in terms of competition and values. The people in power sometimes instead of creating a conducive atmosphere for growth; bring about ambiguous criteria creating doubts in the minds of these young and bright futures of the country.
Nearly 50 per cent reservation in government –aided institutions, including IIMs and IITs, from next academic year is a foregone conclusion. Much has been said about the undesirability or otherwise of such a move in higher education. Few of these views take a look at the issue from the perspective of teachers in these institutions. Among the most important reasons why, despite poor salary, high-calibre faculty is attracted to teach in IITs, IIMs and IIS, I think is the opportunity to teach the very best students. Teaching toppers is a pleasure one can appreciate only if one has experienced it first hand. You take that away and you take away a very important reason for the very best to teach in these institutions.
In higher institutions, typically, the pace of learning accelerates quickly. The level of teaching is way beyond regular schooling, HSSC or Graduate courses. In any class representing a mix of merit and reservation students, one will be presented with the challenge of where to pitch a lecture. If you cater to the merit group, the reserved group shall be unable to keep up. If you slow down to the reserved group’s level, you risk resentment from the merit group. Moreover, it also takes away the challenge that attracts one to teach in these institutions – the adrenalin that flows from matching one’s wits with the best. Some of these problems I guess are still present with 22.5 per cent reservation for SCs and STs. But as the number represents only about one-fifth of the total, the system should cope with some tutorials and extra handholding.
But the situation is set to change for the worse. With nearly 50 per cent reservation, any given class in these institutions will comprise two distinct intellectual levels. Willy-nilly the institutions may be driven to running separate sections for reserved and merit students, so that teaching could be accomplished at a level commensurate with the intellect of students. This is bound to see friction among the faculty as to who will teach in which section. I am not even talking about the friction levels that shall prevail among the students.
As the best faculty may not want to teach the non-merit category, newer or younger faculty will be pressed to teach reserved students, impairing the ability of these institutions to attract high-calibre faculty, resulting in eventual dilution of brand equity.
A thought comes to mind though?
Why should a responsible and committed faculty be averse to teaching students from socially challenged communities? I have no doubt that most faculty would like to do their bit for social development, provided the students admitted are genuinely needy. But from a little what I have seen during my student days as well as what I understand from reports coming through; most students from SC /ST category in these institutions are children of senior government officials who are hardly socially handicapped. I understand that it also include students who had got into IITs on reservation, then into some public sector corporation on reservation, got promoted on reservation and then came into an IIM(can be vice versa also) on reservation! You can hardly hold it against a teacher if he does not want to teach such candidates in he name of social development.
Perhaps the government would do well to consider the following exclusions from the ambit of reservation: Children of central or state government officials, if they had enjoyed reservation benefit in their education or jobs; offspring of MPs, MLAs and senior office-bearers of political parties up to district level; children of taxpayers or owners of a house, car, telephone or credit card on the premise that if these criteria are good enough the file tax returns, they do not need reservation benefit; and anyone seeking reservation benefit for a second time (say at IIM, having got a similar benefit at an IIT), unless he has worked in a rural area after the first degree for at least three years.
If the government favours empowerment of women, can the children of all widows under a certain income level be included for reservation? Can government revisit its language policy in state-run schools and introduce English at least as a compulsory second language to improve the employment chances of students from reserved category in a globalised world?
Change is welcome; provided it is for the better but in our country change brought about by any from of compulsory regulation or enforcement has always produced a result to the contrary!
(Writer is a visting
(Inspired by V.Ragunathan Analysis on Teaching in a Tainted Environment )
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