But open newspapers and channels in the Indian Union, and you will understand how strongly some vested interests want to push and inflate the influence of Delhi board. I know that the CBSE headquarters are in New Delhi and the Union government in New Delhi funds CBSE more generously than any other state board can even imagine, but surely location and money are not reasons for being singled out as the ‘country’s’ toppers. Or is it? It is an important question, because the collective future of the diverse majority of the Indian Union is at stake due to the ‘Delhi-ization’ of school education, by hook or by crook? I’ll use the not-so-unique example of my homeland West Bengal to make my points. However, it is important to realize this is something that is not limited to West Bengal.

Lets take the West Bengal Higher Secondary exam merit list this year. Most students are from the Bangla medium (natural, because the language in which most inhabitants of my homeland speak, think and dream). There were low-caste Muslim and Hindu names in the merit list. The Kolkata area was not very strongly represented in the merit-list (natural because a huge majority of the inhabitants of West Bengal are not residents of the Kolkata area). However, the top 10 list of CBSE toppers from West Bengal can be described as a list of mostly Kolkata-area English-medium savarna (‘high-caste’) Hindus and ashraf Muslims.

Less than 20 years ago, when I had taken the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (WBJEE) for admission to medical and engineering colleges of West Bengal, the merit list was predictable. A large majority of the rankers would be Bangla-medium students from the districts while Kolkata would show a limited dominance through certain English-medium schools affiliated to the West Bengal board. Almost all rankers, irrespective of medium of instruction (Bangla or English), would typically be from the West Bengal board, with very, very few exceptions. That is hardly odd, since a stupendous majority of Class 12 level students belonged to the West Bengal board. It is natural that they would also proportionally dominate the merit lists of Class 12 level tests of West Bengal. Of course, this natural state of affairs does not suit interest-groups who want to corner resources and opportunities disproportionately higher than their numbers.

As of 2015, one part of the picture continues to be the same - a huge, huge majority (more than 90 per cent) of Class 12 students in West Bengal are from the West Bengal board. But the other part of the picture has changed. Central/Delhi board (CBSE,etc.) students now dominate the merit lists in medical and engineering entrance examinations. While some may feel that CBSE students are somehow specially merited, anyone who seriously cares about the education system and the role of educational institutions, has to look elsewhere to find out the reasons behind this marginalization of the majority.

Why have Delhi board students done well in West Bengal professional college entrance exam? Because the Kolkata-based elite class (whose grand-children are in Delhi board) has changed the syllabus so that only those parts of the West Bengal board syllabus that is common to Delhi boards is included. However, the exams of the central institutions like AIPMT, AIIMS, etc base themselves on the CBSE syllabus. Medical colleges of most states (including mine) have a 15 per cent ‘all-India’ quota - in effect, a Delhi-board quota. There are built-in double-dipping facilities for Delhi-chhaap ‘meritorious’.

It is useful to ask what are medical entrance exams for. It may not be out of place to take one step back and ask, what are medical colleges for? To answer that, it is important to remind ourselves what it is not for. It is not for providing good exam takers from elite background with a prize in the form of a lucrative career. It is also not for nourishing holy cows like ‘national integration’ or to worsen the already skewed urban-rural divide in doctor density. They exist to train future health workers who would provide healthcare to the multitude and/or advance the understanding of human biology and disease by research.

When the powers-to-be rig the system against the lower castes, rural residents, mother-tongue speakers - those who form a majority of our people and are way more likely to serve the diseased people in government institutions in the distant corners of this land, the scheme can be called nothing short of criminal. Systems skewed towards the Delhi boards favours the career-building of the children of white collar first generation migrants or those who are simply 'passing through' a region in their career path or those who are plotting an aspirational ‘escape’ from their homeland. These groups, scattered all over, bond with each other over Hindi antakshari sessions. They also are among the least likely to serve the general public of the province from where they graduated in medicine.

The state public, however, has to decide according to its priorities. Among other things, we need good data about the caste-class-district origin-language medium backgrounds of those who are more likely to serve the who are general public through government institutions, who are more likely to flee the province for ‘greener pastures’, who contributes to the well-being of the public of West Bengal. Based on this, we need to formulate policies, including district quotas and framing a syllabus that positively discriminates in favour of those who are most likely to serve the poor people of West Bengal. The ‘career dreams’ of the rest is, frankly, not the headache of the diseased, poor and impoverished people of my homeland, West Bengal. West Bengal state government’s educational policy should reflect that.

Heart-warming stories of a few poor children scoring ‘beyond their means’ under adverse conditions wont reverse the deliberate under-representation of the already under-represented. That sick trick does not take away the gross under representation of all those who are already under-represented. In short, it is a system that favours the privileged. The poor, the lower-castes, the non-metro mother-tongue speakers - are more likely to study in the state boards. These are precisely the groups under-represented in central boards. However, given the rigged system, central boards are increasingly over-represented in both central and state educational institutions of quality. If this is not against social justice and way to maintain dominance of the dominant, I don’t know what is. This is the inevitable long term cost of this perverse ‘idea of India’ which is another name for dominance by deracinated elites. They have learned how to short-change the emerging groups by simply shifting the goal-posts and have rigged the path to success even before it starts. And they are not only protecting their turf but expanding it. They need to be evicted from our fields, our commons. For this has been our home and will continue to be our home. The ideology and power of the rootless fizzles out against the anchored and the real - once you discount the English-proficiency and patronage of the central govt. Forget clay feet - the elite flyabouts have no feet. They may have rigged the system to parachute down where they like but we need to protect our homesteads and the collective cultural, economic and social futures of our nations.

The central government has no business being in the business of education. It should hand back education from the concurrent list to the state list and abort its rootless aspirational ‘Indian’ manufacturing project. There is still time to roll-back this new system of apartheid - not by settler outsiders, but by those alienated rootless sections of the society to whom liberation always means an disentanglement from their birth-society and success necessarily means not serving their birth-societies. These groups, scattered all over, find immense solace in each other. The tricolour project partially works. Its time to roll-back this creeping ‘merit’-based apartheid by getting school education out of Centre’s jurisdiction, a power that Delhi usurped during the Emergency of the 1970s, the darkest period for the democratic institutions of the Indian Union. (IPA Service)