For example, I wonder how different my life would have been had my father not decided to join the navy, and instead stayed on in Gorakhpur. There would have been no question of joining DPS, R.K.Puram, and hence no path leading to St. Stephen's. There would have been no exposure to debating and quizzing as much as I got at these two institutions. Probably, there would have been no economics in my life! I am reaping the benefits of a decision my father took. Between me and someone who is still living in a small town, there is not much difference in terms of what we have done. It is the different between what our parents did, their parents did, and so on. The difference between us would be one of inheritance. Perhaps this is what most of us call destiny, or kismat.
I have had the good fortune of being involved in Bandhan microfinance's education program. The more I think of it, the more impressed I am by Bandhan's recognition of the multi-dimensional nature of poverty and inequality. Here's a short film I had made back then (I apologize for the copyright violations, of course): Bandhan's development projects. This would give you a better sense of the inequality I'm talking about.
The fact that I can justify this inequality in educational opportunities doesn't necessarily mean that I support it. While I have absolutely no moral issues with our educational system being competitive, I have a problem with the competition being unequal. Is the competition between a Delhi-educated student and a small town student, for admission into an IIT or an IIM, a competition between equals? I do not think so. This was, of course, the basic principle behind reservations.
The problems that reservations bring up are by no means small. Firstly, there is the problem of identification - a problem that plagues any social scheme in India. How does one identify people who are deprived of education opportunities? Our policymakers have taken an economic and caste viewpoint to this. While caste-based identification is an abhorrence to me, I am not too comfortable with economic selection too, especially in its implementation. Moreover, isn't inequality a question more of degree than of existence? For example, a person who is poor and rural is at a greater educational inequality than one who is rural but rich*. Thus, any policy that identifies people based on the existence of certain parameters is bound to be flawed. The less be said about people mimicking this parameter, the better.
How then can educational inequality be bridged? At a national level, I do not have anything of import to suggest. However, each one of us can contribute something to the cause. While I am usually skeptical of volunteerism, I cannot help but be impressed by Jalnidh's initiative Eclaire. We need more of this.
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* - this is similar to any economists' arguments against using the head count ratio (HCR) as an indicator of poverty. Head counts tend to mask the degree of inequality within the less privileged section.
