Is Brain Drain II on the anvil ?

Manish Anand/ SNS

For long India’s politicians lamented the slowdown in the country’s progress, attributing it to the brain drain of the late 70’s and early 80’s when a huge amount of young talent made an exodus to greener pastures, a la the USA. Unfortunately, neither did they take into account the reasons which contributed to the exodus and nor are they doing it in circa 2006. If at that point in time United States welcomed immigrant talent with open arms, allowing it to contribute to its intellectual property, today you have similar opportunities in Europe, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, China and even small countries in Africa, acknowledging India’s strength especially in the field of Information Technology.


It was the extraordinary reservation policy of the Tamil Nadu government in government jobs and professional institutions which pushed Tamil Brahmins to the wall. When seeking admissions in state engineering and medical colleges became an onerous task, they began scouting around for options in USA, Europe and the Middle East and, in due course, made their mark in a land which respected their talent and allowed them to be adopted by the nation in return.


If past trends are any indication, another brain drain of much higher intensity is on the cards, with the Union minister for human resources development, Mr Arjun Singh, hell-bent on “mandalising” professional institutions. “The government has failed miserably in developing educational infrastructure at the highest level these past years. With more than 50 per cent reservation being pushed through, the general category students are left with practically no choice but to head to the US for higher studies. A much larger brain drain is imminent with professional institutions coming under the ambit of excessive quota,” said, Mr Vikash Aggarwal, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus. Add to this are the plethora of private players in the market with foreign universities aggressively wooing Indian students with not just top of the line professional and educational courses but also facilities of loans, easy repayment options et al.


No formal assessment has been made quantifying the kind of work that Indians have done in the USA or the quality of intellectual capital that the Indian community has created in the last three decades, be it in the field of medicine, law, IT, science and technology, military science, research, business or economics. NASA is driven by Indian engineers’ talents. Indians constitute more than 25 per cent of Microsoft’s staff strength at its Seattle headquartres. Some of the finest doctors across USA are of Indian origin. Sam Pitroda, the blue eyed man from Rajiv Gandhi’s inner coterie and also probably the Indian with the highest number of patents is a prime example of what India could have gained by holding him back. Afterall the STD revolution in India, especially in the rural hinterland, is thanks to him. Although attempts are being made to involve him in the Knowledge Commission, we have still lost out on the man’s genius which could have steered things back home in India.


Historically, it is immigrants who have given America its hugely distinct character and contributed in a major way to its wealth creation. If they as a nation have monopolised the world politically, economically, and militarily, it is because of those millions of people who abandoned, unrecognised and unrewarded in their own homeland, chose to toil in a nation which at least recognised their potential and allowed them to blossom and prosper, in the process contributing to their rising GDP and development.


Ironically in India, no one has bothered to question the plank of social and educational backwardness on which the reservation policy is being pushed. Had the plank been justifiable, the reservation in government jobs and educational institutions would have uplifted a vast chunk of population in a broad based manner. However, the fact belies the justifiability of the much milked plank for what are largely political compulsions. According to a senior bureaucrat with the Central government, “the benefits for the scheduled tribes have been mostly pocketed by the Meena tribes of Rajsthan and by those in the North-east region. The former are the most affluent section in Rajsthan with most being landowners. The North-east tribes have never been socially backward and have still enjoyed financial assistance by the state and Central government. Scheduled caste tribes of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Kerala, and other states were left behind in the process of social empowerment through the reservation policy,”


A Union Public Services Commission member while interviewing a candidate from the Meena tribe in an All India Services Examination was curious to know why he was claiming quota facility when he hailed from an affluent family. “You have already claimed the reservation facility in Rajsthan and now you are a sub-divisional magistrate. Why are you claiming the facility once again? The smug response was, “since the facility exists, I might as well claim it,”


A 2002 batch IAS officer had the modesty to acknowledge that it was the mindless reservation policy that allowed him entry into the prestigious IAS along with his three brothers who too would never have been able to make it had it not been for reservation. He humbly said, “I know I do not deserve to be in the service. Having been in the company of the general category students who were preparing for IAS, I could clearly see that I lagged behind in practically every area. Yet, inspite of my father being the director general of police of a state and the fact that I went to the best school in Bhopal, I still availed of the reservation policy and exploited it as a matter of right, first for IIT and then IAS.”


After 50 years of India’s independence when the practice of reservation should either have been done away with or revamped, we have in a regressive manner embarked on a path which will only lead to greater chaos and not to forget a mass exodus of talent in the form of Brain Drain. All is still not lost. The youth is a very potent force in any country, moreso in India, which is on the verge of an economic boom with the front runners being its young people.


A critical review of the policy can instill hope. Parliamentarians must rise above the small gains of petty vote bank politics and examine the efficacy of the policy in totality. “At least the government could ensure that the quota policy benefits one member in a family and the facility is taken just once in a lifetime by a beneficiary,” said a senior Indian Revenue officer, frustrated with endless benefit that the quota policy bestows on its beneficiaries. However, politics based on populism can hardly be expected to do the needful to bring in sanity in reservation based politics. It was understandable when a junior doctor sitting on hunger strike at AIIMS in the Capital bemoaned that no politician has visited them despite more than 100 of his colleagues collapsing due to the hunger strike. The hurt and disappointment of the youth who feel that they are the new untouchables, since they have taken a stand that is politically untouchable, could hurt the country’s growth and development, unless quick steps are not taken to address these specific concerns.

The crumbling steel frame

Manish Anand/ SNS

The Indian bureaucracy is a white elephant in the typical sense. Just as the owner of the white elephant never gets rid of it because of the legacy attached to it, the bureaucracy too remains part of the Indian governance system with all the flaws afflicting it.


Babudom, a Raj relic, is in urgent need of a revamp before it becomes redundant and undermines the democratic advancement of one billion plus people. But governments and legislatures refuse to look into it as they sit over reports for reform of civil services, the fulcrum of the Indian bureaucracy.
The state of affairs can be gauged from the flurry of visits IAS and IPS officers made to new ministers after the change of guard in Bihar recently. A cabinet minister in Bihar had this to say: “Everyday I am visited by IAS and IPS officers, all claiming to be loyal to my party and promising their commitment to me.”


Bureaucrats do not even shy away from cashing in on their caste equations with ministers in power. And when ministers refuse to meet them, the babus lobby for postings with close attendants of ministers. “We used to be in such awe of these IAS and IPS officers, but now with so many of them making a beeline everyday we feel sorry for the Indian administrative system. They make a case for themselves out of belonging to the same caste as the minister,” said an aide of a cabinet minister in a state.


It has got so bad that IAS and IPS officers are branded for their political leanings at the junior and middle levels and some also at the senior level. “We have identified all the IAS and IPS officers who were loyal to the previous government and who did their best to subvert our chances of winning elections. All of them will be shunted out in due course of time and all those who suffered at the hands of the previous government would be brought back to important postings,” said another cabinet minister in Bihar.


“Many upper caste officers had taken central deputation during the rule of the previous government, and now with the change of guard in Bihar they are coming back with a favourable government now in place,” said a social activist from Bihar.


No surprises that the cabinet secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been branded the most corrupt IAS officer by her peers in the state. Also, the Magsasay award winning IAS officer Gautam Goswami is languishing in Beur Jail, Patna, for swindling money meant for flood relief in Bihar, reportedly in collusion with top politicians of the state.


Apologists always come out with so-called shining examples of bureaucracy to cover the diseased set up. Yes, there are officers who challenge Naxalites to open debate; who visit Muslim villages during communal riots and deliver speeches in chaste Urdu, instilling hope in the system; who mingle in a crowd of thousands of agitating students over the killing of their colleagues, empathise with them and to promise that they would be heard; who openly chastise villagers for keeping lower caste people away from their domain. But they have always been in a minority and suffer at the hands of the political establishment of the day.


Instances are abundant to paint the bureaucracy black, but the irony is that the Central government and the Parliament just refuse to take notice of the fact that their so called “steel frame” is disintegrating.


In the recent past, the Hota committee and Alagh Committee reports on reform in the civil services were submitted but both of them are gathering dust. Parliament has no time to look into the recommendations and take action. Both the committee chairmen extensively toured foreign countries and took a long time to submit their reports, which undoubtedly incurred huge costs paid out of the taxpayers’ hard earned money.


A joke doing the rounds in official circles is that if you exhaust all extensions of services after retirement, just lobby for chairmanship of some committee and go abroad to enjoy the luxury of taxpayers’ paid out working holidays. “The Indian bureaucracy has always been trained to write reports and they are internationally recognised for their caliber in this regard,” remarked a career bureaucrat.


Serving bureaucrats have damned both these reports as extreme reactions, which could never have been accepted by parliamentarians. “From lowering the age limit to 25 years to recruit candidates just after their 12th examination as well as sending bureaucrats for corporate postings to improve their skills in governance were just simplistic solutions that Mr Hota and Mr Alagh reached. They did not bother to attend to the archaic structure of the bureaucratic system from recruitment to training and postings as well as professional growth,” said an IAS officer.


“The average age of recruits in the civil services is 28 years, and all the training modules were developed with the assumption that the average age of recruits would be 21. Now, how do you expect to mould such people who have fully developed beliefs and attitudes. Despite that the training runs for a minimum of 19 months for Indian Revenue Services and 36 months for Indian Police Service. Is there any match between training requirements and age of trainees?” he asked.


How much importance is given to training of budding bureaucrats can also be gauged from the fact that postings at training centres are considered punishment postings. “With serving bureaucrats reluctant to take up training assignments, top officials dish out promises of postings of their choice if one takes a training posting,” said a serving bureaucrat.


The recruitment process of civil services has not seen any change for a long time. It still practices the “scaling system” to pare down all optional subjects that candidates take for the examination. Expectedly, after implementation of the Right to Information Act (RTI), many candidates applied to know how their papers were evaluated and how this “scaling system” works. But the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) did not oblige the candidates and still keeps under wraps its unique “scaling system” for different subjects taken as optional papers.


The result is that a few optional papers are more scoring than others, benefiting a few candidates and proving to be a disadvantage to others. “Why do the Indian vernacular languages fetch so much more marks than other subjects? Can the UPSC tell us what makes such subjects so special?” asked a serving IPS officer.


“The written examination (2000 marks) makes the personality test (300) almost redundant. There are many IAS and IPS officers who got 90-150 marks in the personality test, which makes their ability for such jobs suspect,” added another IPS officer. The UPSC doesn’t differentiate between the job of an IAS officer and a departmental job like the postal services, he added.


But larger issues are politicisation of bureaucracy, which belittles the delivery mechanism of governance for the common man. Politicians have a short-term agenda, and they make the bureaucratic set up milch the common man as a buffer for their election campaigns as well as to be financially secure. And the bureaucrats are more often than not loyal to politicians rather then their professional commitments.


“It’s in the interest of politicians not to keep themselves away from influencing career moves of bureaucrats as well as their day-to-day functioning in the name of democracy. This way they can always play on the insecurity of officials,” said a serving IAS officer. “Do not expect separation of the functioning of law enforcement agencies and law makers as well as of policy makers and implementation of policies. The separation will undoubtedly benefit the common man and the nation socio-economically, but it is suicidal for politicians. And, it’s not going to happen with the current bunch of politicians either,” he added.


It’s in this context that a general category candidate can take the civil services examination till the age of 30, and other backward caste candidates can do so till 33 and scheduled caste and tribe candidates have no age limit at all. Hence, there is no possibility of reform either in recruitment or training process. The system has to go on as it suits the highly insecure politicians that Indians are blessed with.


And what if someone is determined to make a difference. For them an assistant income tax commissioner has this to say: “Four assistant income tax commissioners were posted in Delhi and in three months all of them were shunted out to far-off places. Their crime was that they did not take Rs 10,000 packets to their superiors on Diwali-eve. The punishment taught them the rules of the services and in future they will not slip up.”


Questions people can always ask such as why do so many die when floods visit a state or why do so many farmers commit suicide when drought strikes or why a stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral caves in or why do criminals with heinous crimes on their records find their way into Parliament and legislatures or why money meant for pensioners and the aged finds its way into the pockets of babus and netas or why the children of ministers go abroad for higher education. But people are pacified by promises of investigations.


At the end of the day, people are to blame as they do not know how to exercise their rights and make governance accountable. But the journey is long and full of rigours to test the collective character of all Indians.

Reform NCW

by Manish Anand

National Commission for Women is a bewildering organisation. It baffles all interested in its work. At best it remains an organisation to make statements when an incident takes place and let people past their prime to make speeches, declaring themselves the best champion of women’s cause.


How badly it suffers from poverty of ideas could be gauged by putting its chairperson under a scanner. “We are ever thankful to the media as most of our jobs are done by them, Mrs Vyas remarked recently. She was attributing to the seriousness in taking up issues concerning women by the media.


Supposed to give instructions to BPO industry over women workers’ security, NCW could only repeat what the BPO association had themselves agreed to like police verification of cab drivers, radio tracking of cabs among other things. Nothing to contribute, but to enjoy the goodies that come at being in NCW! 


In October, NCW had compiled in association with NGOs and independent lawyers a comprehensive bill to amend laws concerning sexual assaults on women, but it remains in cold storage till date. Worse while presenting the bill to the Union home minister Shivraj Patil, Mrs Vyas had expressed much hope that Patil (calling him his elder brother) would be able to get the bill passed in the winter session.


But the minister found many of the suggestions tough to implement and in the fashion of ‘you propose and i dispose’, he washed his hands off the bill.


The utter incompetency of NCW breeds from the very unprofessional approach of the government. The post of chairperson has turned out to be that of rehabilitating politicians who do not fit into other scheme of the party. How do women expect themselves to be represented by someone like Girija Vyas who at best is a puppet.


And puppets do not stand for any cause!


If the National Human Rights Commission could be headed by the retired chief justice of the Supreme Court, why not National Commission for Women. At the same time, this body should not be into the hands of those who play the game for the cunning NGOs who have mushroomed for making fast bucks.


Till date there remains nothing substantial that NCW has made to the cause of women in India. And it would remain so if it’s into the hands of politicians. Politicians are the biggest enemy of any change that society demands. The fate of women’s reservation in parliament symbolises their intent best.

Central varsities in limbo

by Manish Anand

Indian Universities are off the radar of the Central government. The focus of course is on building new science and technical universities. Three dedicated science varsities are coming up to take care of basic scientific research in India. So, dismay among the vice-chancellors of central universities, 20 in number, is understandable.

All arguments of capacity to achieve the objectives of the government to take scientific and technological research to higher level if given an opportunity by the central varsities fell on the deaf ears of the government this week. Jawaharlal Nehru University hosted the third annual central universities’ V-Cs meet where they tasted the bitter salt of step-motherly approach of the Congress-led UPA government.

The pleas of vice-chancellors to let them do the task of taking India to the higher plan of scientific achievement was shot down by the Union science and technology minister Kapil Sibbal on the pretext of flexibility in hiring faculty independent of rigid UGC regulations and focussed approach. “You can rather built a world class new airport, but can not upgrade the existing ones to that level” was the argument put forward by Sibbal in rejecting plea of the V-Cs for better attention to the existing central varsities.

No shock that one of the V-Cs chose to lapse into deep slumber when Sibbal went into verbal jugglery, akin to that of an apologist, showing dreams to kids which are beyond reach.

“Think out of the box” was the directive from the voluble minister, exhorting universities to tie-up with private sector in raising resources on the pattern of foreign varsities. Is India at par with the United States or the European Union that its universities will garner funding by the wealth-obsessed private sector? Has the government let them to come to that position where they can attract investors by their works? Shooting off advises out of blue has been the fort of Indian politicians for a long time and it remains so despite the nation facing daunting task in a World Trade Organization mandated regime.

Our universities are dying a slow and painful death. Even the best of the best universities like JNU, Delhi University, Allhabad University and others remain tied down for want of fund. The government remains apathetic to all ideas of reform in UGC and its funding pattern as well as recruitment process. “A junior faculty member in IIT gets more than what a senior faculty member gets in universities. How do you expect us to attract best of the talent to teach the young minds,” asked the V-C, JNU, Prof. BB Bhattacharya.

It’s all right singing tunes for IITs, IIMs and other fews, but the mass come to numerous universities to actualize their dreams. And at the end of the day, science and technology and management is not what a nation looks for to grow into a developed nation. There are other streams too which need the blue-eyed attention that few gets.

The government can afford to be myopic only at the cost of its own peril and a disadvantaged society.