Barkha Dutt: preference

Transcript context

…Do you think it boosts the case for an avowedly elitist approach to education, which it seems India has done? It’s very hard to get into those schools. They’re very, very good. If you finish, you’re branded as high quality in some way. Does that interact with caste in some manner, that there’s, in general, an elitist approach, and when it comes to the foreign market, that pays off big time? Or no? That’s an interesting question. I don’t know that there’s a simple answer to it because I’m okay with an educational elite, actually. I think that there is some merit in keeping society competitive and aspiring, and pushing people to do better and better, as long as there’s a level playing field to access those centers of excellence. The fact is that many of these whiz kids, as they were once called, have actually studied at government schools or what I call Kendriya Vidyalaya systems, and so on. Not all of them have gone to posh — what are called private schools in the West and what are called public schools in India. I do think that to create a competitively drawn elite that is elite not because of what they earned, but because of how well they did in exams, may be an old-fashioned idea, but it’s one that I actually support. I think one of the reasons we actually do better and well outside of India is because we come with some of these skills. We’ve been brought up to be industrious, hardworking. We’ve been told in middle-class homes and even in lower-middle-class homes that education is everything. Education will make or break your life. If you get into a good college or a good institute, your life will change. This is the Indian ethos. This is what aspirational India is all about. I think it answers your question about why so many Indians are doing well outside India. Does it eliminate the caste question? Yes and no. As there are more institutes, as they draw people from more diverse groups, you are still seeing people who are Dalits, who are at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, who could have an IT degree and still face social discrimination when it comes to who they want to marry. They won’t be cleaning toilets, and they won’t be denied access to the village well, but if they want to marry, so to speak, above their caste, they will still face resistance. Economics doesn’t tell you the full story. It isn’t that if you’re at the bottom, you get a great degree and you become wealthy, that’ll just buy you out of all the other forms of discrimination. It is like race. It is a little bit like the race debate. The fact is, you can be a music legend, a cinema legend, a basketball legend, but it will not take away what happened with George Floyd. I think you’re seeing something similar here, where an educated elite person will not face the kind of discrimination that Bhanwari Devi, whom I reported on decades ago, did in her village in Rajasthan, but will not be totally free from all instances and all examples of discrimination. The other important point to note is that where there are quotas, not all of them get filled. You do need a certain baseline to get into these higher institutes, whether of medicine or technology. That’s where I think we really have to work. I think our institutes of higher learning are excellent. Where we lag behind are the institutes that come below: our schools, our colleges, our first degrees. t’s where I think we really have to work. I think our institutes of higher learning are excellent. Where we lag behind are the institutes that come below: our schools, our colleges, our first degrees. That’s where the gap is, and that’s what leaves some of those quotas at the higher level underfilled or underutilized.…

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