Reserving vs. Preserving Leadership

This month, a city shone while another burnt, ironically highlighting the success and failure of our education system. Even as Ahmedabad was held to ransom for demands of reservation from an affluent community, Chennai celebrated, having bred a world class leader – the new CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai. The rags-to-riches story of a shy, studious boy from a middle-class family (whose engineer father earned a modest Rs. 3000 per month) captured yet again the minds and hearts of not just Indians but people worldwide.

People were fascinated to know more about Sundar Pichai, given that he was now amongst the most powerful leaders leading a world renowned company, Google. Report after report cited friends, family members, colleagues who knew Sundar to be extremely hard working and intelligent. By the usual yardstick of academics, while Sundar was brilliant in subjects such as science he wasn’t a ‘topper’ in school but went on to top his game later, winning a scholarship at Stanford. An alumni of IIT Kharagpur, even though now worth an estimated $150 million dollars, back then his parents had to really make their ends meet to put Sundar onto a fight to the U.S. Sundar’s story isn’t by any means an exception. In fact, we have numerous great minds who have striven hard against even more daunting circumstances to shine brightly. Education being a powerful leveller.

Which is why starkness of another city burning in the name of reservation also stands out equally. What is it that a young lad from a middle class family do so differently that another lad from another community can’t, who is perhaps even more affluent than him? What would happen if every community demanded amendments for the ‘prejudices’ it has to seemingly endure? How do you reserve jobs or seats for one candidate of a particular community/caste even if s/he is less deserving or less capable? Till when should a nation make its citizens forfeit their right to be treated equally for its own failures to provide basic services and facilities for ALL citizens?

The Patel-community (among the most affluent ones in Gujarat) standoff seems to be just a small trailer. We will have hundreds such communities across India that wake up and start demanding rights to be treated as special, or more equal, if we don’t revisit the feeble and outdated policies of caste based reservation. The government should earnestly review the reservation policy and relook factors that have perpetuated this politicisation of backwardness. Yes, it is true that development remains much skewed among regions and communities in India and that reservation has indeed been a great push to brining many communities at par with the rest of the society.

But now, even as the world has started wooing the great minds we breed, to develop their towns and nation, to feed its soul and grow its power,  it is more than imperative that we raise our leaders and give them the impetus to own their genius. In every field. To make every child want to pursue what s/he does best. That’s when our towns, our institutions, our organisations, our polity, our society, our nation will be replenished to thrive. If we really want India to be a contender as a world leader in the coming centuries we need to do away with the concept of Reserving. We can revel in the success of our many Sundar Pichais but real success would be to not have them to leave the country in order to reach their highest potential. The idea is to Preserve and Promote Leadership – the highest kind; rather than reserving leadership. Since anything achieved without merit is neither cherished nor preserved.