Ethnic nepotism or merit?

Rajesh Dev

Everyone everywhere seems to be engaged in cutting the heads off a hydra. Large sections of the people are alarmed at the deteriorating quality of our political life, our social values, our academic standards or what have you. These worries are being articulated with serious reflection but distinctive personal biases by expressive commentators. Yet these commentaries seem like incremental interventions that perhaps inadvertently, neglect the core issues of quality and measure of human material. All our institutions, values and norms are sensing deterioration in quality human material that gets characterised as sectoral institutional collapse. Indeed the issue concerning the quality of human material and the related anxieties are certainly universal and therefore may seem gratuitous, to be articulated only as a “regional” North-eastern anxiety in a dedicated page of this newspaper. Interestingly, a reader recently reminded me that the issues that I have often raised through these columns are not necessarily issues that have exotic growth in the region called the North-east, but is a pervasive ailment of the national soul. I wish I could tell him that it has exactly been my customary estimation in these columns that anxieties of the region are not typically unique. So the violations of the rights of minorities in Gujarat, or the expressions of violent antipathy towards certain communities in Mumbai or the blatant reflection of political depravity amongst the political class or even the transgressions of citizens’ rights by extra-legal organisations. All have their parallel manifestations in this region that so patently declares its difference. Nevertheless, there are aspects that introduce “unique” vernacular elements to these universal stories of anxiety that is not typical of this region called the North-east but other locales too. The metaphorical category called the North-east also encounters identical anxieties but the idioms for articulating these anxieties have typical local eccentricity. In Meghalaya, currently there is an animated anxiety concerning its institutions of learning. The Meghalaya chief minister recently rued the corrosion in the “quality of education” in his his state; while the minister for higher and technical education passionately declared the wish of the government to make the state capital a “knowledge city”. Even observers scrutinising the working of a number of such institutions, in the state and the region, have criticised the complete lack of integrity and transparency in the functioning and appointment procedures in institutions of higher learning. Yet the “regional” bias of these expressions lies in the fact that all forms of social anxieties are sought to be explained and reconciled through a fixed ethnic prism. Indeed ethnic identity that forms the basis of social differentiation and oppression in the region is the most proximate idiom through which rationalisation of social anxieties and concerns are made. Even the most progressive of voices inadvertently identify with this ethnic idiom to explain social conditions. Explorations that begin with concerns for merit in institutions like the Indian Institute of Managements subliminally revert to this ethnic idiom to explain lack of academic propriety. So ethnic nepotism by the incumbent director is obliquely assumed to be the reason why the newly established IIM at Shillong has a large number of faculty members and office-bearers from a particular community. Another section of society is of the opinion that it is ethnic discrimination that denies many indigenous aspirants any substantive roles in institutions like the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences. Both these institutions, along with many others, are thus caught in the bind of ethnic arguments and indigenous claims. The region has around 16 universities, six medical institutes, one IIM, one IIT and one NIT besides a host of colleges that also offer post-graduate courses. Yet we find the largest portion of students in institutes of higher institutes in other parts of India belonging to this region. It is estimated that 20 per cent of the IT workforce in many states of south India belong to the region. Applicants having the desired qualifications for posts in various institutes have been denied appointment to faculty positions in states like Meghalaya, because of pressures that emanate not from concerns of merit but ethnic kinship and skewed criteria of reservations. There are also subtle pressures in some states for the conversion of faculty positions reserved for Other Backward Classes and Scheduled Castes into reserved positions for Scheduled Tribes. Institutes are denied the autonomy and control over matters of appointment and measures for quality control because of prevailing social perceptions. Questions of merit cannot be determined simply by adherence to formal degrees and institutional positions. We may recall that the influential theorist and philosopher Karl Popper was a cabinet-maker and school teacher. So was Will Durant, who taught in a school. Their professional positions however did not subvert their innovative originality as thinkers and creative scholars. Social perceptions, conventional norms of merit and current notions of control over institutions need to be sincerely addressed without ambiguous loyalties if institutions in the region are to have social relevance and worth. It is the design, character and autonomy of our institutions that will ultimately shape the content and quality of the societies in the region. Source: http://www.thestate sman.net/ page.news. php?clid= 14&theme=&usrsess=1&id=210878