Our great government has decided that since they cannot improve primary and secondary education, they will have quotas in higher education both in elite government institutions (IITs, IIMs, etc) and in private institutions (except those run by “minorities” who can do whatever they want) in accordance with constitutional amendments which are passed by Parliament with the explicit objective of subverting considered Supreme Court judgments.

Government schools have insufficient blackboards and toilets; teachers do not turn up to teach (they turn up to collect salaries). They are committing a crime against India’s poor children. But being members of “Teachers’ Unions” no one can discipline them. A couple of chief ministers tried. They lost elections. Ergo our political class has concluded that if the choice is between pampering lazy unionised teachers or being fair to the children of India’s poor, then any day our leaders will ignore the children. Government schools don’t teach in English. The rich and the wannabe rich including all politicians and bureaucrats make sure they send their kids to private schools where English is central. The children of the poor are condemned to no education, poor education or education that gives them no skills that they can leverage into decent wages. All these are well-known even to leftist economists like Amartya Sen. But since these are too complex, we have decided in our own Indic, Hindoo, Gandhian, Nehruvian, Socialistic, Mandalesque, Common-Minimum-Programmatic way (because we are like that only) to come up with a sham symbolic solution which we know does not work (at least does not work to fulfill the objective of uplifting the underprivileged).

... contd.