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Reservations are likely to promote divisiveness and are likely to harm the country as well as the OBCs more.

A few years ago, I was working in Indonesia as a USAID Consultant to the Ministry of Health. As a part of my work, I had to take a group of doctors on field trips to teach them Task Analysis, a technique we introduced to bring more professionalism in the management of health services in Indonesia.
Whenever I asked the team to choose a Health Center for filed work, they would talk among themselves, and in five minutes time, come up with their proposal, and it was always unanimous. I was amazed at the team work and remarked about the same with appreciation to the participants who were doctors. One of the lady doctors narrated to me the following in response to my complements. I reconstruct this from my memory:

"Professor Rao, I agree that we in Indonesia work like a team. We care for each other and respect each other. There is a lot of sharing that takes place. I also agree that it should strike you as an important part of our culture as I believe that your country which taught us a lot at one time has this one aspect very much lacking in them. I am sorry to say this as I had only one experience which I like to narrate."

She continued, "Professor, a few months ago I was attending a meeting of UNFPA in Bangkok, and it was attended by participants from various countries. Each country had two or more delegates. We had delegates from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Philippines, Japan and India, etc. One thing I noticed was, whenever a Pakistani spoke something about his country, his colleague supported it. Whenever a Bangladeshi spoke about his country, his colleague from another department supported it. Whether it was a Sri Lankan, or Pakistani, or Bangladeshi, or Malaysian, or a Singaporean, they supported each other in their presentations. However, whenever an Indian spoke, the second or third Indian contradicted him, and said what my colleague said is true in his state (Tamil Nadu) as he comes from Tamil Nadu, but the situation is different in my state (UP), as I come from UP, and the third person gave a third story. The convention was filled with contradictions by Indians."

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* Contributed by -
Dr. T. V. Rao,
Formerly Professor, IIMA,
Chairman, TVRLS,
Ahmedabad.