Column

Whoever thought up the 90-10 quota scheme for students seeking admission to junior colleges in Maharashtra needs to have his butt (or butts) kicked. Quite apart from the fact that the Bombay high court has thoroughly exposed the state government’s transparent effort to pander to the SSC stream, there is a more fundamental issue at stake here: does the state have a right to arbitrarily change the rules in the middle of the game, leading to unnecessary confusion and tension? Can the goalposts be shifted when the game is on?

For now, let’s not debate the merits of the quota at all. Rather, let’s ask ourselves this: assuming quotas are the best solution forwhatever problem the state is seeking to solve, is the state not duty-bound to explain its thinking process before it implements the same? How can any government think that it can take decisions that affect the lives of thousands of students without consulting them? Why didn’t any bureaucrat explain to his or her political master that you cannot hold up the entire admissions process just days before it begins? The Indian school system is a pressure cooker for both students and
families. It doesn’t need one more pressure point. Why couldn’t the process of creating quotas wait for next year, so that proper consultations could have taken place with the stakeholders?

Politicians and bureaucrats think that they have a right to callous behaviour, even if it leads to mental torture for citizens. A few weeks ago, the income-tax department did the same when it mindlessly decided that taxpayers who e-file their returns have to send a confirmatory copy to someone in Bangalore. You then wait weeks to figure out whether that copy has reached the right place or not. The penalty for not reaching the same to Bangalore is that you have to file the returns again.

Surely, someone could have made arrangements to take deliveries of the confirmatory copies at the local level? If officials from government, whether in Maharashtra or in the central income-tax department, have put thousands of citizens through needless stress by whimsical decisions, it is time to make them pay for their sins. The parents who took the matter to the high court should now ask the same court to award them costs. Exemplary financial punishments need to be meted out to politicians and bureaucrats who mindlessly put people through tension.

Arbitrary decisions must have costs attached to them if governance is to be improved. It would have a salutary effect on citizen morale if the babus who issued the 90-10 GR (government resolution) in Maharashtra are withheld their promotions or forced to pay three months’ salaries as fines. If bad decisions do not have consequences, it is an open invitation to continue making them.

This principle is now fairly well settled, as courts have started holding political parties responsible for vandalism during bandhs and other forms of coercive protests. If the Shiv Sena can be asked to pay damages for smashing things at Reliance Energy’s offices during the recent tariff protests, why should the state government and its babus not pay for decisions that are poorly thought through?

The issue, as stated above, is not whether the quota decision is right or wrong. We can argue about that till the cows come home, and we may never reach agreement. The issue is whether these decisions can be announced in a way that causes the least disruption, where people are given time to adjust to the new realities. If ICSE and
CBSE students have to live with a 10 per cent quota, maybe their old schools can be given a year or two to start their own junior colleges, so that students don’t have to try their luck elsewhere.

Our babus and netas will, of course, pretend that they are trying to serve the greater good. Since the number of SSC students is much larger than that of the other two streams, it must have looked like an easy way to earn brownie points with them. Politicians will be politicians, and playing ducks and drakes with the hopes and aspirations of thousands may be par for the course. But is it necessary to do it in such a hamhanded way?

It is time for the courts to say, no, this can’t be done. It’s the least they can do after calling the Maharashtra government’s GR as “arbitrary”, and reeking of “political ambition” The Bombay high court emphasised that “it would be the epitome of unfairness if students with merit do not get colleges of their choice.” Having said the harsh words, the only thing missing is punishment of the people who perpetrated this abomination.