Quotas, Quotas, Everywhere!

In the recent past, India convulsed through two violently damaging agitations resulting in senseless loss of lives and public/private property, apart from huge inconvenience to the populace and severe disruption of routine life.  Both were community/caste driven and incited by the literally incendiary behaviour of the usual vested interest groups and vote-bank politics.  One by the Jats in the north and the other by the Kapus in the South in Andhra Pradesh.  Both sought to coerce governments to concede quota-based goodies for the respective communities through intimidation.  Since the instigators of the day are the power-brokers of tomorrow,  governments tend to capitulate, as the Haryana Government did with the Jats and further extended the list of approved quotas. 

(What?  People are already grumbling and preparing to post sharp comments like `very serious blog', `totally unlike you' etc.  Come on, folks! The idea is not to be serious for too long; please bear with me for one more para!!)

There is no denying the fact that in a country like India, inherent and institutionalised social iniquities compel the poorest to continue wallowing in their misery generation after generation. Without any genuinely structured attempt to provide short term succour and longer term livelihood solutions, quotas are the easier way out and absolutely necessary.  But, economic backwardness, measured by annual household income or some similar yardstick, should be the sole criterion for quotas, since it can subsume all other pertinent considerations like backward caste, tribe etc which are invariably the drivers today.    But this is anathema to (surprise, surprise!!) exactly those who have grown out of poverty from those segments, using the same quota system and are relatively better off now.   These bundles of avarice just refuse to move aside on the basis of economic backwardness but want to perpetuate their quotas, leaving in doldrums those unfortunate souls way below them on the ladder.  Because economic backwardness is not the basis for the current quota system, there is ample scope for undeserved sections of society to exploit crevices and muscle their way to quotas with the connivance of scheming politicos.  Consequently, the whole quota scene in India could be seen as a terrible joke perpetrated on the citizenry, but for the havoc it wreaks from time to time. But what if it were a joke??

(Whoa, that took a bit of effort to bring this back to the track readers are familiar with).

The Supreme Court has now asked the authorities running the game of cricket to implement various reforms, one of which is to have a three-member Selection Committee.  This is in lieu of the current five members, who are picked from each of the five geographic zones, with the chief being appointed by rota from one of the zones.  Typical of the quota mindset we have.  What if these five zones were mandated to contribute three players each to the team of fifteen, with the zonal selector appropriately playing God?  Obviously, talent, form and performance will be damned and the physical location of the player and his equation with the zone's selector become the overriding qualifications. Cases of a waning player choosing to uproot himself from Koodankulam to Kurhukshetra to exploit zonal quota will be commonplace.  Climax will be when an expanded bench of the Supreme Court is again forced to select the team itself,  some 12 hours before a crucial match, to negate the shenanigans of the regional selectors!! 

This scribe always wonders how our naive netas have failed to spot glaring opportunities to supeficially help their vote banks while lining their own pockets, using the much-maligned quota system. One easy route to solving the unemployment malaise among the downtrodden will be to fix a quota for the allocation of all reserved  railway, airline and bus tickets to the various castes/communities.  This way, all genuine travellers will be at the mercy of the quota class and the latter can run legally sanctioned and officially protected rackets employing thousands of `quota-entitled' people to manage the secondary sale of those tickets at premium.  Actually, this same formula will work for seats in schools, educational institutions of all hues including management schools, thereby expanding the field of opportunity multiple times.  One realizes this is being done by enterprising school and college managements now, but the lack of governmental approval inhibits the system from achieving its full potential, without a doubt.

Another area which has not been fully explored with reference to the quota system is the practice of medicine.  There are doctors passing out of medical schools, with barely any knowledge of the human body (granted, they can identify body parts as easily as the rest of us, but that is probably it) and their only focus is to milk the sick in the society to become rich rapidly.  This author does concede that this is a conundrum -- not being a good doctor and having such a lofty ambition to amass wealth in the short term.  See, if a doctor has a tainted reputation (inevitable if he is barely knowledgeable) or no reputation at all (he has to do something to develop one), one doesn't need rocket science to divine that he is going to be bereft of patients and earnings.   If only the politicians and the government think shrewdly and implement a quota system here, such doctors will benefit immensely.  All patients should be forced to join a queue and should be allocated to such pretend-doctors entirely based on a quota for each doctor. This allocation should be done through a lottery, just so that the system and government are not unfairly accused of targeting a particular individual to be sent to a low-life doctor.  This adroit step would also stop the opposition from holding the parliament to ransom on this count.  Yes, somebody requiring urgent repair his bowels might end up with an absolutely raw and untested dentist or one screaming for attention to his gall-bladder may have to deal with an orthopaedic struggling to distinguish between  fibula and humerus,  so what?  Tough luck, that is the way the quota works, don't be too stuck up about that, patients!!

Frankly, even as I was writing that, the endless possibilities struck as a bolt from the blue.  Not all enterprises do equally well, obviously due to the (dis)abilities of the management as well as the lack of quality products/services sold.  But, a government thirsting to apply that great socio-economic roadroller-leveller called the quota system can thrive in this fertile area, with only imagination to limit the scope. To sustain and mollycoddle those incorrigibly and chronically inefficient institutions, compulsory diversion of clientele can be a facile and satisfactory solution, as has been proved in the case of majority of public sector units in India.  For instance, a lousy restaurant, which prides itself on serving absolutely inedible food, but perceived by the socially and politically correct as deserving a good chance and a long run, should be given a number of customers for every meal.  Of course, the by-now-well-established lottery system should settle who should be favoured with such meals.  One can see that this quirk of lottery also makes for excitement and suspense, apart from upholding the principle of neo-natural justice, which is enshrined in the dictum `For the sake of quota-beneficiaries, the rest should all grin and bear'!!

True to form, many politicians are asking for quotas in private organizations now.  Why not, this is their benevolent contribution to the principle of dispersing the goodies far and wide.  This author's suggestion is that all those in the political spectrum and their cronies, who have gone from Zero to Billions in 5 years (sounds like competition for Aston Martin Vantage N24) should first use their wealth to set up new companies with the sole objective of aiding the quota-drive.  Some kind of amnesty programme can be run to shut the doors on all those cases involving disproportionate income/wealth, in litigation for ever, and all such shenanigans can be forgiven so long as such new enterprises  are entirely populated with our quota-entitled brethren.  Employment and reasonable salaries should be guaranteed for at least twenty years, regardless of the way the companies perform.  Those who want such entitlements only on very narrow caste/community grounds, should be compelled to hire only those castes/communities in managing their companies.  Once this experiment is conducted for a decade or more and the results are found favourable,  the next step of dipping into the state's ink-pot can be thought of.

The mounting of the quota flag on the social summit can be something like this.  Quota-based job rotation for everyone, could be the literal clincher. Certain percentage of forward communities should periodically be assigned jobs like coconut tree climbing, pig-rearing, garbage clearing, construction site work etc to teach them empathy and the meaning of dignity of labour.  Anyway this will come about logcially if we continue to provide quotas for others to do other lucrative jobs mentioned above; no specific effort in this direction may be required.

With the way the quota basket is sought to be expanded and extended,  we may soon arrive at that watershed moment in history, when it might dawn on the powers-that-be that it is far easier to list the few castes/communities which are excluded from quotas.  Easier to track and maintain. This may be the only reform we will see in this context in the near future.  My dear wife has patiently read all this and has one question: `What is the one thing that might change things in India, with reference to quota-regime'?  My guess is the only antidote is the possibility that India will end up worse than Pakistan in all spheres of life, with the continuation of the present system.  Her real concern is that someone up there, who is as seriously hare-brained as the author, may happen to read this post and decide to launch an experiment.  She refuses to believe that this author is only mimicking reality, it is not the other way around!!

Rumour has it that Harsh Bhogle's exclusion from the IPL commentary team this year is also due to the quota problem??  Sony has removed its quota of one they had - for an Indian commentator reasonably sensible, refreshing even in the routine, humorous when the opportunity comes through, extremely incisive, cohesive and erudite to the extent one can be in this sphere.  With the abolition of that quota, out went Harsha??  Is this true?