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']]}I've been following the quota controversy on tv very closely and I find a rather disturbing trend among some politicians and pro-quota speakers. I've seen quite a few instances where, in a televised debate on the issue, they try and skew the argument. This tactic of queering the pitch is often used when a person is not on a very confident of his side of the argument. In fact this technique is often used by defense lawyers in India in cases involving rape. In case they cannot dispute that the rape occurred due to overwhelming evidence the lawyer tries to cast aspersions on the moral character of the victim. By doing so the lawyer tries to say that while it may be true that the rape occurred, it might have, somehow, been brought about by the woman herself.
Anyway, coming back to the reservation issue, here are some skewed arguments that I've heard on tv.
- The first one comes from the Police commissioner of Mumbai, Mr. A.N. Roy. After the lathi charge the police told the media that there were some event managers involved and that they stage-managed the whole issue. Even if what he was saying was true does that justify the lathi charge on a group of students. Even if someone was coordinating the whole protest does that take away anything from what the students were trying to say? If the whole event was a set-up would the students have stood their ground while being lathi charged? Think about it. If you go on a protest because someone paid you 100 bucks to show up there, what would you do if the police lathi charged you? I'd flee because if I didn't care about the cause it isn't worth 100 bucks to sit there and be whacked around by the cops.
- Another argument which I frequently hear on tv is that the general category students have a monopoly over education because 77% of the seats are "reserved" for them. This is wrong in my opinion. The general category students have access to 77% seats while the SC/ST candidates have access to 100% of the seats. A SC/ST candidate has the option to seek admission in the general category but the reverse is not true.
- Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) said in a television interview that "most upper caste students take the benefit of getting an education in India and then go abroad to earn money. This has to be stopped. These people are the real traitors of the country!!!" This is a classic example of skewing the argument. Without any data to back him he tries to insinuate that a student from the upper caste has no loyalty towards his country while a SC/ST/OBC student is brimming with love for his motherland. I can understand that Mr. Yechury is reluctant to admit that capitalism is the only ideology to have survived. Regardless of which caste you belong to, you are driven by career goals, material comforts and cold hard cash. That is exactly why people go abroad to work.
- A "SC/ST activist" on Times Now said "these protests are illegal dirty. I know that they are being funded by dollars coming from abroad." I guess it's easy saying this stuff when you're sitting in a nice air-conditioned office of a tv station. A few dollars would not convince me to go on the streets in the middle of summer to protest against the government machinery. I would only do it if I truly believed in the cause. Even if, for arguments sake, we do accept that this pan-India movement is being funded by "dollars" does that in any way make the demands of these students any less legitimate?
- The finance minister Mr. P. Chidambaram when asked why the government is not willing to set up a judicial committee to examine the benefits of reservation replied "but what's there to examine. The benefits are clear to everybody." While this statement from any other politician might not have raised eyebrows, coming from the finance minister this is most shocking. In all his interviews he usually has the interviewer floored by backing up every point of his by facts and figures. It's sad that even he has to resort to such wishy-washy statements.
The sad thing is that not one of the newsreaders/ interviewers sought to pin down the gentlemen who said these things. Either I'm missing something or we need our media to go at our politicians even harder.
