•Shekhar Gupta: What did he tell you when he gave you this charge

Veerappa Moily: He said yes, don't compromise on merit. These institutions should not only survive but they survive you know with that kind of an excellence which should be parallel to the many many leading institutions of the world. This is the direction which you know he said don't make compromise. I think I have done that job and produced a report and my slogan was expunction, inclusion and excellence

•Shekhar Gupta: But you know that report was seen as something which the real mover of the reservation may not have liked very much. Did you run into some resistance?

Veerappa Moily: You know the always, origin of the river, you know,

•Shekhar Gupta: Right

Veerappa Moily: But origin of the river is definitely different from where the river joins the ocean. This is how the work has to be done and I have done it but that doesn't mean that origin, you know, I should not change the shape of the origin but ultimately what is important the broad based idea to build higher education in this country

•Shekhar Gupta: Because increased reservation also happened

Veerappa Moily: Yeah, it not only happened you must have seen that we provided eighteen-and-a-half thousand crores. That kind of a money was never given to the higher education. You know as a result of that report Prime Minister was motivated to start number of world class universities and manifold increase not only seat was increased to you know all those 45 years the increase in seat in some of these institutions was 1 per cent. But we got at a stretch 52 per cent increase in seats, then hundreds of more universities, Central universities, many IITs and many IIMs. This has really you know made the higher education reach the zenith

... contd.