Fight quotas, but the right way

A picture is worth a thousand words; on television, shown over and over again, moving visuals can tell much more and even enhance the drama.

The television pictures of Mumbai police raining lathis on young medical students who were agitating near the governor’s residence have attracted sharp criticism and censure from the state and central authorities.

Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil has ordered an enquiry into the lathi charge while even the Union HRD minister Arjun Singh, whose proposals generated the protests in the first place, has condemned the police action.

Even if the police gives a justification—that the students were trying to gatecrash the governor’s residence—the damage has been done; on television, the repeated lathi blows looked brutal and deserve strong condemnation. In this age of non-stop satellite broadcasts and ‘breaking news’, the police will have to change their traditional riot control ways.

But now let us look at the agitation itself. The students, who are still studying to be doctors, were worked up about Arjun Singh’s plan to introduce 27 percent additional quota in medical seats. Those who are already in college will be affected only at the post-graduate level, where the seats are few and far between.

Since the government is yet to apply its mind to the proposal, much less make it a law, the heat generated might be a bit premature. The students would be better advised to hold their fire till there is finality about what the law will be.

 More significant is the fact that while doctors in different parts of the country have also struck work in protest against the lathi charge, affecting health services badly, the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors, a key organisation in the state, has stayed away.

The ostensible reason is that there are several doctors who belong to the ‘backward castes’ in its ranks. Such a cleave does no good to the cause of medical students.

Students—medical and otherwise—ought to be concerned about Singh’s proposals and voice their protests. That is their right. Shutting down hospitals, however, is no solution. The proposal to introduce caste-based reservations in institutions and then in the private sector is something that will eventually affect everyone in different ways.

If it has to be fought, the medical community must do it with argument and fact; refusing to serve the needy just defeats their cause.