Letters To The Editor

Mai baap Raj 8226; SHEKHAR GUPTA has written a perceptive piece 8216;My seat, mai baap8217;, IE, May 27 on the current quota imbroglio....

Mai baap Raj

8226; SHEKHAR GUPTA has written a perceptive piece 8216;My seat, mai baap8217;, IE, May 27 on the current quota imbroglio. He is correct in pointing out the small number of seats available in top engineering and medical institutions. All these years the planners were criticising government spending on higher education, particularly inadequate allocations for primary and secondary education. All that is now sought to be corrected just to make quotas acceptable. There is more to what ails our system. The trustees of Harvard or MIT do not make money for themselves but plough back their funds into developing these institutions. Our educational barons treat education as a source of profit for themselves. Unless the end use of huge fees in private institutions is transparently accounted for, the desired autonomy of these institutions will not achieve the needs of quality education. The welfare of future generations demands a proper study of the different desirable and feasible options 8212; something the Planning Commission should have done already.

8212; P.P. Kane, Mumbai

8226; SHEKHAR GUPTA is absolutely right 8216;My seat, mai baap8217;, IE, May 27. What we are facing today is no less than a state of Emergency, with the government partitioning the country along caste lines, to retain power at any cost. The media, its vernacular sections in particular, must launch awareness campaigns to warn all OBCs, STs and SCs against the pitfalls of the reservation policy, which will neither integrate them with their countrymen, nor uplift their community as a whole. Their demand should be for equal opportunity for good primary education and an adequate number of quality vocational colleges, which will give them a realistic chance of progress.

8212; Beena Pandya, Gurgaon

8226; THERE can be no doubt in Shekhar Gupta8217;s assertion 8216;My seat, Mai baap8217;, May 27 that any improvement in higher education presumably signifies a loss of power for the Indian politician. Now when our higher education institutions have attained international recognition, the politician is still playing his old trick: creating artificial scarcity, be it of gas, telephone, small auto vehicles and of course quality education. While we intellectuals grudge all this exploitation of the gullible illiterate Indian masses, we have never tried to systematically expose them at election times. Isn8217;t it time some powerful forums were formed to awaken the masses?

8212; Ved Guliani, Bangalore

Our IITians

8226; ANOTHER point which needs to be made in this debate over IIT seats and post-graduate medical seats 8216;My seat, mai baap8217;, IE, May 27 is lack of concern shown by a majority of the thousands of IITians and medical professionals living abroad. A few generous IITians have no doubt funded new activities in four IITs but that is not enough. These professionals have received education at a hugely subsidised fee. If a majority, if not all, of them had contributed even a fraction of their earnings to set up new IITs and medical colleges, we would have been better placed to meet the rising demands. Even now it is not too late.

8212; Narendra M. Apte, Mumbai