Friday, May 26, 2006

Have you seen 'Rang De Basanti' - Honourable HRD Minister?

Our HRD Minister Mr. Arjun Singh seems to be making decisions under the influence of settling personal issues rather than considering the benefit of the entire nation. Earlier this year when IIM Bangalore suggested a proposal to set up a campus in Singapore, Mr. Singh strongly opposed it by asking them to serve the nation first and then go international. However he failed to do that, so probably to give a vent to his fuming ego, he brought in the reservation issue asking them to increase the seats by 54%. Since the IIMs and other central institutes are bound to the government, they will have to follow his directions. The move by Mr. Singh is applaudable. His so called backward friends have found a seat in the premier instutions and the IIMs have now to pay a price for their victory.
But Mr. Minister, it is high time you realise that for India to be on the global map, leave the institutions to take their own decisions. Inspite of so much government interference, it is surprising that none of the IIMs feature in the top 100 B-schools of the world. Give them complete autonomy, let them go global, leave the admission criteria to them and within a matter of a few years, many institutions will compete with their global counterparts.
Giving the so called backward class everything on a platter right from higher education to jobs in the industry under the pretext of them having suffered the most after 58 years of independence degrades the competition levels within the country. Many MBA aspirants like me will never dream of studying in this country which is meant for 'your downtrodden friends'.
There has to be some shame left in you Mr. Minister for rejecting the pleas of so many doctors who are suffering in the scorching heat and facing the police lathis and cannons. Just assuring them that general category seats will remain the same doesn't solve the problem. Give us an answer about what would you do to maintain the competion levels. Do you think people who walk in with reservations are equally competent with those from general category? Definitely not. Citing this example - I have known an SC/ST student walk in with ease into IIM Lucknow with a meagre 72 percentile whereas general category students with 99.5 percentile also do not make it. So what kind of competition can we expect from these students. Barring a few students, the rest of the reserved students are complacent as they know that the politicians of 'their' country will never let them down. So life for them is a different ball game altogether. Doesn't that lower down the prestige of our institutions? But why should you be bothered? You just want the votes and settle personal issues.
After all this that you are doing for them let me ask you one question Mr. Minister - tomorrow when you have to go through a crucial operation that would decide the fate of your life, would you allow a reserved category student who has walked into AIIMS easily without the necessary marks to operate on you or would you want to be operated by a student who has slogged to get into the instituition and has maintained its standards? I wont be surprised if your answer is no. But IF your answer is YES, then I surely believe that what you are doing is perfectly correct and my lost respect for you will find its place once again.
At this age, the amount of hatred that you are amassing from the young students prompts me to ask you one last question - 'Have you seen Rang De Basanti??'. If yes, then I hope what happenned in the movie to the Defence Minister, doesn't happen to you.