WHY RESERVATIONS DON’T SUCK

This story is so true that anybody doubting its veracity is welcome to join me on a trip to my village town where all the necessary evidence including the people and documentation involved will be presented.  The doubting simons will be charged a fair amount for conveyance, lodge and board at my house and also for my time – after they are convinced of the details mentioned herein.

I know a person by the name JM in my village.  He runs a “vada pao-bhaji pao-chai” shop in the town market.  JM is illiterate, in his forties and runs a very tight shop.  He is also arguably the most honest and astute land agent in the town – I know that by experience. He is very hardworking, always in his shop by 5 AM getting ready for the market bustle to commence.  But he is as illiterate as they come.

Two weeks ago (i.e. in May 2016) JM called me and said his wife wanted to speak with me.  She is illiterate too.  She shares an equal burden with JM in running the shop.  So I spoke to her.  She wanted guidance in the matter of their daughter’s college admissions.  The daughter had just completed her XIIth (high school).  This is always a tricky proposition – small town folks asking a city-bred city dweller for educational guidance.  Eight years of intense exposure to rural and semi-rural Raigad have put me in a fairly good position to indulge in such guidance, but for the uninitiated, I would advice steering clear of getting into such a situation.  Because the chasm in expectations and intentions is so significant that nothing meaningful can result and plenty can go wrong.

After the preliminary questions, Mrs. JM told me she understood from Dr. Abdul Kalam’s book that Robotical Engineering (pronounced RAA-BAA-TEE-KAL VIN-JAY-NAY-RING by Mrs. JM) was the way to go.  I immediately had a “Oh man, there we go…” reaction within me.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that not only did I not know what Robotical Engineering is, I don’t know anyone studying it in India and since I don’t see too many robots around, I would not recommend it as a branch of study for a rural kid looking for education that would lead to a white collar job in India.  And it was not as if the daughter had aced her exams – the marks reeled off over the phone were quiet pedestrian.  Mrs JM then urged me to visit them so that I could advise them in details in person.  I agreed.  Later I reviewed her performance in various “usual suspect” exams  - CBSE Board Exams, JEE Mains, NEET, MHCET etc.  My conclusion was she was a B- grader but at the same time knowing where she came from I knew the kid had already climbed a mountain or two in life.

An interesting aside about Mrs. JM just for perspective.  Once my wife accompanied me to JM’s vada-pao stall in the town market.  Mrs. JM was manning the shop.  While pleasantries were being exchanged and I was introducimg my wife to her, I noticed that Mrs. JM could not take her eyes off my wife.  After some time with a lot of hesitation in her manner and awe in her voice she asked my wife in Marathi, “Don’t you act in Marathi serials?”.  It was the sunglasses, sneakers and Marathi peppered with English words..

Over the next few days I had a few conversations with JM, Mrs. JM and their daughter over the phone.  I advised the daughter to consider B.Sc. (Agriculture) or Veterinary Medicine, because I know that these colleges/courses in Maharashtra accord preference to children of farmers.  I also told  her that these branches of education would likely get her a government job with rural relevance.  Well, I had completely misread their aspirations.  Folks from my surroundings in Mumbai posess a single-minded determination to put their kids on a plane to America come hell or high water.  For the JMs, it is relocation to Mumbai.

I finally visited my village and the JMs came over for a chat.  The JMs detailed out their game plan.  The kid would go to a “government college”.  She would use her caste certicate to get admitted (they belong to the Nomadic Tribes category).  They had no intentions to send her to a private college where they would have to part with huge fees.  Their first choice was Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonere which is about 30 km from our village town.  I was quite impressed with the clarity of their plans.  I noted with even more interest their self-assurance regarding getting into a government-funded college which is part of a system that swears by affirmative action.  I perceived a sense of belonging in their expectations – sort of on the lines of “the government has laid out an infrastructure to aid people like us, and we will tap into it.”

I suddenly recalled an old colleague of mine, who is from Mumbai but studied at the said college.  He is a  human resources stalwart.  I called him immediately and laid bare my concerns – how do these “reservation kids”, who, with a below par performance in qualifying examinations get into engineering colleges riding on caste certificates, eventually turn out?  I was wondering whether once they enter the world of jobs they are relegated to pedestrian jobs well below their stated qualifications?  His response was stunning in what it revealed.  He said that 90% of his classmates from the said college were today working overseas – and that included those who qualified on the basis of caste certificates i.e. the so-called “reservation candidates”.  He reeled off names – X is working in IT in Singapore, Y is working for Aramco in Saudi Arabia, Z has been in the US for five years etc.  He did say that the reservation candidates started college  as weaklings with various handicaps – mainly that they were weaker in academics and had a poor knowledge of English and hence lagged behind in comprehension.  However he said confidently that as long as they were willing to compensate for the handicaps by dint of hard work, they eventually “made it”.  In most cases it took them a few extra years but they reached meaningful positions.  He connected me to a lady who was a “reservation candidate” in his class and came form the same vicinity as my village.  I called her.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that she and her husband ran a small successful IT firm in Vashi.  Moreover, she came across as any Mumbai-bred professional – I found no trace in her of a person who spent the first 16 years of her existence in a village – not that I find anything demeaning in it, but the business world and especially the world of IT does prefer an urbanized demeanour.

Now let’s see how JM made it happen for his daughter until now.  He told me she went to a boarding school called Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in Nizampur, about 30 km from our village.  Apparently each district of Maharashtra has such a government-run CBSE school.  I Google’d and found http://www.jnvraigad.org/AboutUs.html.  You can check the website.

I have reproduced the About text from this site below.  So JM tapped into yet another government scheme, whereby his daughter went to this residential school without paying a penny.  And his son has followed in her footsteps, having moved there last year in 6^th standard.

In accordance with the National Policy on Education (1986), Government of India started Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs). Presently the JNVs are spread in 27 States and 7 Union Territories. These are co-educational residential schools fully financed and administered by Government of India through an autonomous organization, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti. Admission in JNVs are made through the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Selection Test (JNVST) at class VI.

The medium of instruction in JNVs is the mother tongue or regional language upto class VIII, and English thereafter for Maths and Science and Hindi for Social Science. Students of the JNVs appear for X and XII class examinations in the Central Board of Secondary Education. While education in the schools is free including board & lodging, uniforms and textbooks, a nominal fee of Rs. 200/- per month will be collected from the children from IX to XII class. However, childrenbelonging to SC/ST, Girls, Physically Handicapped and from the families whose income is below Poverty line are exempted from payment of fees.

So the long and short of it is as follows.  The daughter of an illiterate vada-pav vendor with an ancestral background of being from a Nomadic Tribe can go to a government-run CBSE school and a government-funded engineering college with severely sub-par marks in the qualifying public examinations and eventually be deemed fit to be hired my enterprises for jobs overseas.  And it seems like this can be the rule rather than the exception.

Simple deductive logic tells me that reservations don’t suck – not necessarily.  They can work.

For my part this is is deal I have struck with the kid -  I will mail her a book (English), which she will read to the best of her abilities.  If she does not understand any word in it, she will stop reading, Google the word on her phone until she gets the meaning and pronunciation.  Once she is done with the book, she will call me and we will discuss the book for half an hour.  The conversation will be strictly in English.  Then we go on to the next book.  The first book is on its way … Hemmingway’s The Old Man And The Sea.