Thousands of striking doctors and medical students have taken to the streets in Delhi in continuing protests against a government affirmative action program for low-caste students.
Chanting slogans condemning quotas for members of lower castes, the students and doctors carried placards reading "Caste versus competence’’ and "Youth for Equality.’’
The strike by medical students in New Delhi began earlier this after the government announced plans to increase quotas for lower-caste students in state-funded medical, engineering and other professional colleges from 22.5 percent to 49.5 percent.
With the strike crippling medical care in public hospitals in New Delhi, authorities asked army doctors to help run emergency services for thousands of impoverished patients in government-run hospitals.
Despite laws against discrimination, India’s lower castes - 80 percent of India’s 1 billion people by government estimate - are still at the bottom in most social indicators, such as education, income, employment, asset ownership and debt.
It remains rare for a lower-caste Indian to hold a high-paying job that requires advanced schooling.-AP
In Mumbai, protesting medical students trying to approach the state governor’s residence were thrashed with police batons.
Similar protests have been reported in cities as far apart as Amritsar in the north and Bangalore in the south.
Sixteen years after an embattled Indian prime minister unexpectedly announced a sharp widening of caste-based job quotas in the government to splinter the Hindu vote bank of the Bharatiya Janata Party, caste has again taken centre stage.
India’s caste structure is a system of social stratification, with groups ranked from the highest castes to the lowest, the Harijans, or untouchables.
No one knows how many castes exist in India. The figure could exceed 5,000.
The current controversy is over government moves to extend quotas in the most prized seats of higher learning from the current 22.5 per cent kept aside for the lowest castes and tribal people, and include more people from so-called Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
How the affirmative action issue will pan out could impact not just on national politics, but also the country’s economic prospects.
The National Knowledge Commission, a group of expert advisers to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, voted 6-2 against widening caste quotas in higher education.
"We are only saying: hold on, don’t jump in to it," says commission chairman Sam Pitroda, who rose from humble beginnings and is given much credit for India’s telecommunications revolution.
"Let us look at the new realities of the future," the official also said.
He is a carpenter’s son who married a high-born Brahmin against stiff family resistance. Others who voted with him against the enhanced reservations in education include the chief executive of Infosys, India’s best-known software company, and Professor Andre Beteille, the country’s best known sociologist.
The big worry for many is that the next step would be to force private industry to accept caste quotas at a time when global competition is causing many to sink.
At the moment, despite all the din, the government is reluctant to force caste-based job quotas on the private sector, fearing it will arrest the growth momentum.
Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath says the government wants to nudge industry toward setting up more factories in the 104 districts of the country where the lowest castes and tribes make up more than half the population.
‘We will first see what the private sector does voluntarily. If that fails, we will look at other options, including legal options,’ he says, according to a reporting the Straits Times.
Still, a few companies have been mindful of widening the social catchment pool for some time and tracking their progress in recruiting from the lowest strata.
Hindustan Lever, India’s biggest consumer goods company, says 12 per cent of its staff are from the lowest castes, 7 per cent are tribal and 36 per cent are from the other backward classes.
What it does not give out yet is the ratio of white-collar workers to blue-collar. Besides, it is no secret that scheduled caste and backward caste representation in boardrooms is poor.
