📰 Sri Lanka’s aggravating economic crisis
Why did the island nation reach this point? How has India extended support and assistance to its neighbour?
•The story so far: Sri Lanka’s economic crisis is aggravating rapidly, putting citizens through enormous hardship. Over the weekend, at least two senior citizens died while waiting in long queues to buy fuel; the price of cooking gas spiked to LKR 4,199 (roughly ₹1,150), the price of the widely used milk powder shot up by LKR 600 a kg, and authorities were forced to cancel school examinations for millions of students, due to a shortage of paper.
Why are prices soaring and why is there a shortage?
•Sri Lanka is in the grips of one of its worst economic meltdowns in history. The first wave of the pandemic in 2020 offered early and sure signs of the distress — when thousands of Sri Lankan labourers in West Asian countries were left stranded and returned jobless; garment factories and tea estates in Sri Lanka could not function, as infections raged in clusters, and thousands of youth lost their jobs in cities as establishments abruptly sacked them or shut down. It meant that all key foreign exchange earning sectors, such as exports and remittances, along with tourism, were brutally hit.
•The lack of a comprehensive strategy to respond to the crisis then, coupled with certain policy decisions last year — including the government’s abrupt switch to organic farming —widely deemed “ill-advised”, further aggravated the problem. In August last year, the government declared emergency regulations for the distribution of essential food items, amid wide import restrictions to save dollars which in turn led to consequent market irregularities, and reported hoarding.
•Fears of a sovereign default rose by the end of 2021, with the country’s foreign reserves plummeting to $1.6 billion, and deadlines for repaying external loans looming. But Sri Lanka managed to keep its unblemished foreign debt servicing record. All the same, without enough dollars to import essentials such as food, fuel, and medicines, the year 2022 began on a rather challenging note, marked by further shortages and an economic upheaval.
What is happening on the ground?
•At the macro-economic level, all indicators are worrisome. The Sri Lankan rupee, that authorities floated this month, has fallen to nearly 265 against the U.S. dollar. Consumer Price inflation is at 16.8% and foreign reserves stood at $2.31 billion at the end of February. Sri Lanka must repay foreign debt totalling nearly $7 billion this year and continue importing essentials from its dwindling dollar account. In a recent address to the country, President Rajapaksa said Sri Lanka will incur an import bill of $22 billion this year, resulting in a trade deficit of $10 billion.
•For citizens, this means long waits in queues for fuel, a shortage of cooking gas, contending with prolonged power cuts in many localities and struggles to find medicines for patients. In families of working people, the crisis is translating to cutting down on milk for children, eating fewer meals, or going to bed hungry.
Is there resistance?
•Yes, both citizens and different segments of the political opposition are taking to the streets, demanding that President Rajapaksa go home. Many media houses are criticising the government, while social media pages are rife with memes and sharp commentary on the Rajapaksas.
What is the government’s response?
•“This crisis was not created by me,” President Rajapaksa has said, pointing to challenges that arose due to the pandemic. Despite many economists putting forward support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the “only option” for the government, the establishment was reluctant until recently when mounting protests and criticism forced the government into a policy U-turn. The government is now in talks with the IMF to “to find a way to pay off our annual loan instalments, sovereign bonds”, Mr. Rajapaksa said. It remains to be seen how the IMF will support Sri Lanka at this juncture, and to what extent its support might help the country cope with the crisis. Colombo has also sought support from various bilateral partners, including India, by way of loans, currency swaps, and credit lines for import of essentials.
How is India helping?
•Beginning January 2022, India has extended assistance totalling $ 2.4 billion — including an $400 million RBI currency swap, a $500 million loan deferment, and credit lines for importing food, fuel, and medicines. Of this, a billion-dollar credit line was finalised last week, during Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s visit to New Delhi. “Neighbourhood first. India stands with Sri Lanka. $1 billion credit line signed for supply of essential commodities. Key element of the package of support extended by India,” External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in a tweet.
•Meanwhile, China is considering Sri Lanka's recent request for further $2.5 billion assistance, in addition to the $2.8 billion Beijing has extended since the outbreak of the pandemic, the Chinese Ambassador in Colombo told a media conference.
How is India’s assistance being viewed in Sri Lanka?
•The leadership has thanked India for the timely assistance, but there is growing scepticism in Sri Lankan media and some sections, over Indian assistance “being tied” to New Delhi inking key infrastructure projects in the island nation in the recent past — mainly the strategic Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm project; the National Thermal Power Corporation’s recent agreement with Ceylon Electricity Board to set up a solar power plant in Sampur, in Sri Lanka’s eastern Trincomalee district; and two renewable energy projects in northern Sri Lanka, with investment from India’s Adani Group.
•The weekend newspaper Sunday Times took an editorial position that New Delhi was resorting to “diplomatic blackmail”, while cartoonists have depicted Sri Lankan leaders trading crucial energy projects for emergency financial assistance from India. The political opposition has accused the Adani Group of entering Sri Lanka through the “back door”, avoiding competitive bids and due process.
The rate of evolution can match the rate of ecological change
•It is a common belief that evolutionary changes take place at a much slower pace than ecological change. However, this is not completely true, and there is now mounting evidence to the contrary albeit under certain circumstances. In this line of thought, an experimental study of Drosophila melanogaster , or fruit fly, has shown that the pace of adaptation can match that of environmental and seasonal changes. The work, published in Science , studies adaptive tracking, which is defined as continuous adaptation in response to rapid environmental change. Adaptive tracking is known to be the critical mechanism by which living beings continue to thrive in a changing environment, but little is known about the pace, extent and magnitude of adaptive tracking in response to a changing environment.
Preferred model
•Rudman et al conducted experiments on 10 independent replicate populations of Drosophila melanogaster , each being a group of up to 1,00,000 individuals. The flies were kept in boxes 2m X 2m X 2m in size and placed near a dwarf peach tree, outdoors, in Philadelphia.
•The fruit fly is the preferred animal model for many experimental studies of evolution because it is relatively easy to breed and maintain, and multiplies rapidly, allowing many generations to be studied in a short time. The researchers measured the evolution of heritable and observable physical characteristics over time. These could be stress tolerance such as survival under cold, hunger and dessication or related to fitness or reproductive traits such as developmental rate and egg-laying, respectively.
•The flies were exposed to a changing season from July-December in 2014, and monthly measurements were made. The authors write that they focussed on generating highly accurate measurements, taking these measurements on a time-scale matching that of environmental change and collecting measurements from 10 independent populations. Taking measurements from parallel lineages of fruit fly and finding similar changes in the populations which did not themselves interact ensured that the changes were indeed due to selection and not due to random inherited factors.
•There was an interesting observation, as pointed out in a Perspective piece about the work in Science, written by Ary H. Hoffmann and Thomas Flatt, that the rate of the phenotypic (observable, physical characteristics of an organism) evolution varied according to the trait. While chill coma recovery, a marker of resistance to cold, increased as winter progressed, dessication resistance increased, plateaued and then decreased. But overall, the rates of evolution of these traits was rapid and matched the requirements of adaptive tracking.
•While the paper establishes that fly populations can rapidly adapt to seasonal changes, the authors of the Perspective article remark that this may perhaps be anticipated theoretically because fruit fly populations are large, with huge genetic variation, which makes the effects of rare mutations on the evolution minimal. This means even a weak selection could be sufficient to drive a fast evolution. However, they point out that while theories suggest that adaptive tracking may be hindered by factors such as the reduction in fitness due to the lag in adaptation after an environmental change, this is not observed in the real drosophila populations.
Evolutionary rates underestimated
•The researchers conclude that this experiment demonstrates how you can see adaptive tracking in response to environmental change in real time by observing multiple parallelly evolving populations. The action of fluctuating selection implies that evolutionary rates may have been underestimated and that fluctuating selection may play a role in maintaining biodiversity. They write: “Determining whether adaptive tracing is a general feature of natural populations, and elucidating the mechanisms by which it occurs, can be transformative for understanding the generation and maintenance of biodiversity.”
📰 Whither unemployment benefits?
Laws and schemes have failed to offer relief to workers reeling under many blows
•Even before COVID-19, the unemployment rate touched a peak in 2017-18 at 6.1%. The urban unemployment rate was 7.8% and the rural unemployment rate was 5.3%. While the unemployment rate declined to 5.8% in 2018-19 and 4.8% in 2019-20, urban unemployment declined marginally to 7.7% and 6.9%, respectively. It was stubbornly around 7-8% during 2021 and later. If we consider the current weekly status quarterly unemployment statistics for urban areas, it was 9.4% in January-March 2021 and rose to 12.6% in April-June 2021. As per the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy, the average urban unemployment rate remained higher at 9.04% in 2021 and above 7% in January-February 2022. Meanwhile, the rural unemployment rate rose to 8.35% in February 2022 after mild fluctuations around 5-7% since June 2021 (8.75%). Seen by any measure of unemployment or the statistical sources, urban unemployment is of grave concern, at least since the pandemic.
•Does a satisfactory system of unemployment relief exist? Unlike in China, the labour laws do not expressly provide for unemployment benefits. However, under the Employees’ State Insurance Act (ESIA), 1948, the Rajiv Gandhi Shramik Kalyan Yojana (RGSKY) provides unemployment allowance to involuntarily unemployed insured persons who have made contributions for two years to ESI. The cash relief is at the rate of 50% of the last average daily wages for the first 12 months and 25% for the next 12 months. It covers unemployment due to retrenchment, closure or permanent invalidity. It provides medical care during unemployment tenure and vocational training.
•In 2018, the government introduced the Atal Beemit Vyakti Kalyan Yojana (ABVKY) under which unemployed insured persons are provided allowance at the rate of 50% of the average per day earning of the claimant for 90 days on a pilot basis for two years. This was extended during the COVID-19 period.
•Under the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA), 1947, industrial establishments employing 100 or more workers must pay retrenchment compensation of 15 days of average pay for the completed years of service to workers in case they lose jobs due to government-sanctioned workers’ retrenchment or closures of establishments. Here, the burden of unemployment allowance is transferred to the employer. Employment-intensive industries like construction and services are excluded.
•Though the Social Security Code (SSC), 2020, included unemployment protection in its definition of ‘social security’, it did not provide for a scheme for the same. When quizzed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on this omission, the government said: “Unemployment allowance is already provided for under the ESI Act. For the unorganized workers basic social security has been taken care of in the proposed code.” It is another matter that the ESIA, despite a more inclusive coverage of 10 or more workers than the Employees’ Provident Fund Act (20 or more workers), covers fewer workers thanks to its limited and slow expansion of districts in India.
•On the other hand, many States amended Chapter VB of the IDA to apply it to establishments employing 300 or more workers and offer higher retrenchment compensation rates of 45-90 days of average pay for every completed year of service. The Central government has retained the existent paltry retrenchment compensation benefits in the Industrial Relations Code (IRC). So, it is a double whammy for the organised sector workers.
Unsuccessful schemes
•We have used the Annual Reports of the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) and the Standard Note on ESIS, as on July 1, 2021 to analyse the working of unemployment allowance schemes. Under the RGSKY, from 2007-08 to 2019-20, 13,341 insured persons availed of unemployment allowance (1,034 insured persons per year). To put this in context, 0.043% (13,341/3,09,66,930) of the employees availed of unemployment allowance during this period. Further, unemployment allowance’s share in total cash expenditure of ESIC ranged from 0.25% to 0.99%. The incredibly low off-take means that RGSKY is not successful. How can the government argue that this scheme will take care of unemployment contingencies for insured workers, let alone for all workers and persons waiting to enter the workforce?
•Under ABVKY, from July 1, 2018 to March 31, 2020, 120 claims were made, which means a meagre average daily cash relief of ₹73.33. During COVID-19, the government extended ABVKY from July 2020 to June 2021. Only 45,311 persons benefited with an average daily cash relief of ₹147.65. So, these schemes did not matter to the organised sector workers even during the pandemic. These facts strengthen the case against the government’s sole reliance on these schemes. If this is the plight of workers in the so-called organised sector, one shudders to imagine the deprivations of those rendered workless.
•On the other hand, during the pandemic MGNREGA played a significant role in providing if only modest relief to millions of workers. Economists have shown that relief to workers does not cost much as a proportion of GDP. It is much lower than the relief given to corporates. Yet, governments of all hues have been continuing with their neoliberal policies with abandon.
•The SSC offers the vague promise of schemes to the unorganised workers. It has no concrete provision relating to unemployment allowance for workers of the organised sector. The hire and fire reforms in the IRC will accentuate unemployment, especially in urban areas. The SSC must be amended to provide for a universal unemployment allowance scheme with tripartite contributions to be determined by an actuary — the second National Commission on Labour in 2002 recommended an unemployment scheme for organised workers financed by employers, workers and the government.
•Retail inflation has been hovering around 6% and the wholesale price index around 12%. The EPFO reduced its interest rate to 8.1% for 2021-22. Add to this the higher level of unemployment. Laws and welfare schemes must offer relief to marginalised workers who are reeling under multiple blows. An urban employment guarantee scheme should be framed to alleviate the sufferings of workers in the urban labour market.
📰 A solution in search of a problem: on 10% reservations
Instead of addressing inequality, the 10% quota for economically weaker sections creates huge anxieties
•If the number of demands for implementing reforms is any guide, India’s reservation system is clearly in disarray. However, it is unlikely that the recently passed Constitution (124th Amendment) Bill, 2019, creating a 10% quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS), will serve as anything more than a band-aid.
•Given the deep inequalities prevalent in access to education and jobs based on caste and socio-economic status, affirmative action (or positive discrimination) makes a lot of sense. However, the system that was put in place during the early years of the Republic deserves serious re-evaluation in an era when technology has paved the way for deploying a better equipped arsenal. Here I present an evaluation of the potential implications of the EWS quota Bill, followed by some alternatives.
Excluding no one
•The Bill promises 10% reservation to individuals classified as economically backward. However, while a number of criteria were discussed in the parliamentary debate, the Bill is quite silent on this. Assuming that among the criteria discussed in Parliament, those that are currently applied to the definition of the Other Backward Classes (OBC) creamy layer are the ones to be used, it is not clear how useful they would be. While the OBC creamy layer has been created to exclude people who are clearly well off, the EWS quota, in contrast, is expected to focus on the poor. One of the criteria — the income threshold of ₹8 lakh per annum — has been mentioned. The National Sample Survey (NSS) of 2011-12 shows that the annual per capita expenditure for 99% of households falls under this threshold, even when we take inflation into account. Similarly, as per the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), the annual household incomes of 98% of households are less than ₹8 lakh. Even if we apply all the other criteria for exclusion (e.g. amount of land owned and size of home), the Bill would still cover over 95% of the households. So, who are we excluding? Almost no one.
•While the benefits of the EWS quota are likely to be minimal, the cost may be higher than one anticipates. First, it is important to remember that general category jobs are open to everyone, including Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and OBC individuals. Thus, by removing 10% jobs from the “open” category, it reduces the opportunities for currently reserved groups. Hence, this is by no means a win-win situation. This may be particularly problematic for OBCs since OBC reservation is limited to 27% of the seats whereas the OBC population is at least 40% of the population, possibly more. Thus, this move is almost certain to result in calls for greater OBC reservation, particularly if a constitutional amendment to increase the proportion of reserved seats from 50% to 60% is already being adopted.
Getting caste certificates
•Second, actual implementation of the EWS quota could be challenging. Few non-SC/ST/OBC individuals have a caste certificate. A large number of SC/ST/OBC households report difficulties in obtaining these certificates. How would an individual practically lay claim to this status?
•Third, in an era when skill demands are rapidly outpacing supply of candidates in specialised fields, the EWS quota increases the constraints. If a university advertises for an associate professor for quantum physics under the EWS quota and the only suitable candidate happens to be from an OBC category, she could not be hired. These challenges occur for all positions under specifically reserved categories and we have chosen to live with these difficulties in the interest of the greater good of equity. However, there is little benefit to be derived from the EWS quota.
Redesigning reservations
•Arguably, the greatest cost of this amendment lies in the foregone opportunity to develop an enhanced and more effective reservation policy so that we can genuinely see an end to the entrenched inequalities in Indian society in the medium term. We have gotten so used to business as usual that we make no effort to sharpen our focus and look for more effective solutions, solutions that would make reservations redundant in 50 years.
•If we were to redesign from scratch, what would an effective affirmative action policy look like? If the goal is to help as many people as possible, we are facing a serious challenge. On the one hand, 50% reservation looks very large; in the grand scheme of India’s population it is a blunt and at times ineffective instrument.
•The following statistics from the Union Public Service Commission provide a sobering view of ground realities. In 2014, only 0.14% applicants to the UPSC were selected. Moreover, the general category and OBCs have the highest success rate, about 0.17%, and SCs have the lowest, about 0.08%. This may be because of the perception that it is easier for SCs to be recruited via the reserved quota and this may have led to a large number of SCs taking the civil services examination. One might say that many of these candidates are not qualified for these jobs. However, if we look at the candidates who made it past the preliminary examination (providing preliminary quality assurance), the picture is equally grim. Only about 8% of the candidates who took the main examination succeeded. Here the success rate is 8.2-8.3% for SC and ST candidates, 9.9% for OBCs and 7.8% for the general category. This suggests that in spite of the grievances of upper castes, reserved category applicants are not hugely advantaged.
•The above statistics tell us that in spite of reservations, a vast proportion of reserved category applicants do not find a place via the UPSC examination. I suspect statistics from other fields may tell a similar story. This implies that if we expect reservations to cure the ills of Indian society, we may have a long wait.
Spread the benefits
•Hence, we must think about alternative strategies. One strategy may be to try and spread the benefits of reservations as widely as possible within the existing framework and ensure that individuals use their reserved category status only once in their lifetime. This would require that anyone using reservations to obtain a benefit such as college admission must register his/her Aadhaar number and she would be ineligible to use reservations for another benefit (e.g. a job) in the future. This would require no changes to the basic framework but spread the benefits more broadly within the reserved category allowing a larger number of families to seek upward mobility.
•A second strategy might be to recognise that future economic growth in India is going to come from the private sector and entrepreneurship. In order to ensure that all Indians, regardless of caste, class and religion, are able to partake in economic growth, we must focus on basic skills. We have focused on admission to prestigious colleges and government jobs, but little attention is directed to social inequality in the quality of elementary schooling. The IHDS shows that among children aged 8-11, 68% of the forward caste children can read at Class 1 level while the proportion is far lower for OBCs (56%), SCs (45%) and STs (40%). This suggests that we need to focus on reducing inequalities where they first emerge, within primary schools.
•The challenge we face is that our mindset is so driven by the reservation system that was developed in a different era that we have not had the time or the inclination to think about its success or to examine possible modifications. The tragedy of the EWC quota is that it detracts from this out-of-the-box thinking!
📰 Realising the potential of ‘maitri’ and ‘mateship’
Deepening investments in Australia-India strategic, economic, and community ties highlight their stronger relationship
•Australia is celebrating India’s 75 years of Independence by making the largest single investment in our bilateral relationship.
•We do so because Australia and India share a long and special relationship, one we are now working together to make even stronger.
Deep histories
•We are natural partners because we are each ancient and modern countries and cultures, vibrant and full of energy and optimism.
•Australia recognises the depth and diversity of India’s magnificent culture. We know the importance of connection to history.
•Like India, Australia’s story stretches back tens of thousands of years. Australia’s Indigenous peoples are custodians of the oldest continuing civilisation in the world: which is why the Australian government was delighted to return 29 culturally significant artefacts to the people of India this month.
•Even our words for friendship have a similar ring: India says maitri, Australians say mateship. Both stand for respect, understanding and equality. Friends looking out for each other.
•That is the warm friendship shared between our Prime Ministers, The Hon Shri Narendra Modi and The Hon Scott Morrison MP.
•On March 21, the two Prime Ministers held their Virtual Summit and took stock of the remarkable pace we are implementing the Australia-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. To drive closer cooperation and regularly review relations, the Prime Ministers also established an Annual Summit mechanism.
•Since we elevated our relationship in 2020, we have advanced practical actions on cyber and critical technologies, maritime affairs, defence ties, economic and business links and Quadrilateral cooperation.
•The Virtual Summit marked another milestone as our Prime Ministers announced a range of tangible and practical initiatives spanning the breadth of our shared economic, strategic, and regional interests.
•These initiatives are an investment into the promise and potential of our nations. They address the most pressing challenges and opportunities of our time.
•Because when it comes to friendship, we know actions speak louder than words.
•Together, we are harnessing the technology, the talent, and the trading spirit of our people to deliver resilience, prosperity, and security.
•Together, we are focused on the future.
Technology and research
•We are working on a new and renewable energy partnership, to support the development of technologies such as green hydrogen and ultra-low cost solar. We are also supporting research and investment to unlock Australian critical minerals for Indian advanced manufacturing.
•We will boost collaboration on innovation, science and entrepreneurship, to scale up ideas that address global challenges.
•We are also increasing investments into our countries’ rapidly growing space sectors.
•And we are establishing the Australia-India Centre of Excellence for Critical and Emerging Technology Policy — and a Consulate-General — in Bengaluru.
•Our governments know that resilience relies on strong economies.
•We have made significant inroads on negotiations on a deal that will open new two-way trade and investment opportunities, build more secure supply chains, and unlock our complementary economies, increasing the flow of goods, services and people.
Focus on students
•We are investing in India’s talented young people through our new Future Skills Initiative between education and training providers and industry.
•This complements the Australian government’s significant new Maitri scholarships and fellowships, giving Indian students and researchers the chance to experience Australia’s world class education system.
•Australians value highly the Indian diaspora and student contributions to our community — whether economic, social, or cultural.
•Prime Minister Morrison announced a dedicated Centre for Australia-India Relations to deepen that friendship between our communities.
•Australia and India are also working to ensure a peaceful and stable region.
•We are each committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific. We are advancing our cooperation all the way from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Islands.
•Last month we announced initiatives to enhance Australia’s engagement in the Northeast Indian Ocean in support of India’s natural leadership.
•In our defence relationship, we are enhancing information sharing and operational cooperation.
•Such arrangements also help us continue delivering quality humanitarian support to the region, seen recently when India helped Australia’s Pacific family, Tonga and Kiribati.
•Finally, Australia was saddened at the tragic loss of Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat last year. Our governments are recognising his contributions by announcing an Australia-India Young Defence Officer Exchange Program named in his honour.
•These investments in our strategic, economic, and community ties show what we can achieve when two multicultural democracies join in a spirit of trust and understanding.
•Australia knows that in India we have a natural partner who will help build a region where every nation can prosper.
•I hope India sees a similar friend in Australia.
•We are closer than ever and our transformational commitments and collaborations will continue to bring us together. We are realising the potential of our maitri and mateship.
📰 Changing the jurisprudence of scarcity
India has become conditioned to the condition and mentality of shortage in education
•The road to a medical education in India is anything but smooth. One is not talking about the actual years of study and residency, but of making it to the portals of a decently equipped and staffed college. The competition is fierce. The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test draws 16 lakh candidates for 88,000 MBBS seats, the preparation starts years ahead robbing the aspirants of the joys of childhood, coaching factories such as the ones in Kota proliferate, tensions mount, deaths by suicide increase, heartbreaks exceed exultation. And then there is the overarching shadow of reservations, the undoubted major premise in the prospectus. Starting with the advent of the Constitution in 1950 for a 10-year period, reservations have continued uninterrupted at an ever-increasing pace owing to a combustion of unrealised aspirations, increasing awareness of historical wrongs, political expediency and vote banks. As much as we have wanted to move away from a caste-based society, we have become even more wired into one where caste predominantly dictates reservation, and reservation determines accessibility to education and employment.
Courts and quotas
•The courts have struggled to balance the competing demands of preference and unrestricted competition cast as merit. Initially the judiciary’s bent towards equality made it view reservations and quotas through a less-than-welcoming lens. Later on, it recognised that substantive equality does mandate a catch-up philosophy to bring the less fortunate up to levels where competition can be had on more equal terms. Courts have moved up the percentage scale of what they considered permissible, and come around to the halfway mark of 50%, the common negotiating point of resolution. The Supreme Court used a simple explanation to justify this stoppage point: reservations are an exception to the rule of equality, an exception cannot exceed the norm, ergo stop at 50%. It seems to have held on to this principle enunciated in the Balram (1972), Indra Sawhney (1992) and Maratha reservation (2021) cases.
•How long more, one has to see, because the court is getting besieged by States which have a higher percentage of the population in the catchment area for reservation and see both social justice and electoral benefit converge in higher reservation points. Thus, there have been attempts to provide reservation to students of rural schools, students of State Board schools, etc. The latest is Tamil Nadu’s attempt to secure a 7.5% preference for governmental school students in an across-the-board horizontal reservation on the ground of a cognitive gap irremediable by (or some may say caused by) years of schooling in such schools; the Madras High Court is now testing its constitutional correctness. But one may take it that as long as ground conditions remain, the battle for increased reservations will continue and this will be the dominant player in determining who gets into, or is excluded from, medical colleges.
•It needn’t be this way. We have become conditioned to the condition and mentality of shortages in education, and our courts have responded correspondingly with the jurisprudence of scarcity, perpetually grappling with large volumes of students chasing low numbers of seats, and in so doing balancing past wrongs against present denials, an exercise which can never be satisfactory. But rarely has the court taken it upon itself to ask the broader question: why are we consigned to be perpetually in this state of scarcity? Isn’t there a legal right for Indians to have a medical education system which is accessible and affordable, which can accommodate the youngsters who want to make this their profession? The country needs doctors, teachers need jobs, students need education. Every end of the triangle connects, but there is a yawning gap in the middle made up of enabling policy and action. The right to health and to a good education is part of the right to life, under our expanded conceptualisation of Fundamental Rights.
Turn around the dismal situation
•The Prime Minister’s recent observations occasioned by the plight of the Indian medical students returning from Ukraine are on point. Why can’t we provide education to our students instead of them having to go abroad, he asked. Their travails arise not just out of the current situation; apparently, they are driven to seek unregulated agents to obtain indifferent quality education abroad with uneven chances of fitment into the medical system here. His query can well be the galvanising point for turning around the dismal medical education scheme. It does not take much to open up the field for investment and employment of capital and talent. Restrictive rules limiting entrants should be pruned; why should only trusts or societies provide education? The more the restrictions, the more the ways to circumvent them. Focus on enabling and mandating quality infrastructure and capable teachers and keeping standards high. Have a sensible pricing policy, realise that investments need returns, and that there are students who are willing to pay. Don’t drive the commercials into the black market by unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions. Mandate scholarships as the social commitment of the institution. Calibrate a policy of reservation, total and partial scholarships with freedom to run the institution and make a reasonable profit. Let not the government appropriate the seats of private institutions; instead, it can focus on running its own colleges better. Structure tax benefits which will make it viable to start and run medical colleges, and allow minority institutions too to avail of the benefits of Section 80G of the Income Tax Act for donations to its colleges with perhaps a requirement that some, not excessive, seats are for general allotment. Beyond a wholesome regulation, let market forces operate to obtain the benefits of pricing and quality. Give up the substratum of power of officialdom, tailor policy and implementation to meet real needs, create the supply for the demand, and focus on capacity building of institutions and individuals. That’s good Atmanirbhar Bharat.
