Prof Jagdish Bhagwati: I think you are calling him Hardik Patel but you may as well call him Heart-Ache Patel, at least for the Prime Minister. I think the real problem is that we have not really thought through or we thought the whole Mandal Commission approach of reservations, if you have middle class parents and this Patel chap's parents must be middle class and large numbers of people, when you've got something like 90 per cent reservation, no matter for whom, and your kids have to compete for 10 per cent that's a real problem. And I think the answer to this is not to have them join the reservation, because everything will be a reservation - that is a foolish thing to do. I think that since admissions are the first step in getting educated and having some chance at a job because that's a separate matter. Do you have reservations in the jobs as well, but certainly in education, many people here, I find, it's because of the new wealth and so on. So many people here whose children are actually, I didn't even know there was an America, they are coming here. They are escaping but the middle class cannot escape, they cannot afford it. So what we need to do, I don't know if this is feasible, because this is a bigger issue, maybe we can have massive expansion of colleges because traditionally we have always wanted to control expansion, worried about standards and so on. Ultimately the market will determine the standards. If you are producing garbage, you are never going to get very far.
NDTV: You are saying increase the number of seats, general seats, unreserved seats in educational institutions?
Prof Bhagwati: Yes more colleges, because that would be a better way to do it. I think we should also, this is more difficult, because like here, they don't have quotas, but you can get a handicap, like you can get 30 per cent more marks that what you actually have, they scale it up and then you've got to compete. So there is no automatic cap, like I'm going to grab 80-85 to 90 per cent of the seats. I think we should start talking about that. I don't think it can be done. It's going to take a long time because the system is so fed on reservations.
NDTV: Do you think there should be a review of the quota policy?
Prof Bhagwati: Absolutely, because you want to help the people who are underrepresented, people who are underprivileged. But the question is how do you do that? And I think this is where this young man seems to have caught (onto) the general discontent. Whenever I went to Bombay or Delhi - because those are two places that I function (in) - the first thing people talk about are "can't get admissions", "too many reservations", "our kids have to get 90 per cent marks and so on to get even a chance". How much can a prime minister micro-manage after all? A lot of it has to be sequential. Something hits the fan and then you have to start talking.
NDTV: But you believe the Mandal politics has taken India in a direction: The quota policy is a disaster, but not the reservations for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Let's draw a distinction.
Prof Bhagwati: That also. I think we have to give them massive handicaps, you know, so that they can compete; not give them huge reservations. Some reservation, yes, and also some symbolic action. I think one thing which the prime minister has not done much of is appoint more Muslims to his Cabinet, more women to his Cabinet. I mean he's done some but the point is, I think we in the Congress party - I used to belong (to the party); I'm not in politics anymore, but when I was there, we were all Congress people after all - and so that time we literally believed in symbolic action.
NDTV: So you believe there should be more diversity in the Cabinet but that's not the same as the quota policy - the deeply politicised quota policy.
Prof Bhagwati: You march on many different fronts. So as you are trying to reduce the quota system and replace it with affirmative action, that's going to create, you know, resentment.
NDTV: So you think Hardik Patel has struck a chord?
Prof Bhagwati: Oh yes, absolutely. But he's captured this particular point of the inability of the middle class to get an education and I think we need very badly, a proper commission of first rate people to do this and the other thing of course is on the jobs. I think people have to be skilled; a lot of poor people have to be skilled. Now way back, under prime minister Manmohan Singh, one minister - I won't name (the minister) - had asked me if I would head a commission on the use of IT, to improve the access by the really poor and throughout the country and I'd said yes. Of course at that time, I didn't even know how to use a cellphone, but I was being approached as a social scientist and economist. There were the other people, who knew how to use a cellphone and it's not such a big job anyway. I'll tell you what happened. That minister said, "I'll talk to the prime minister," - meaning Manmohan Singh - "and get back to you within a week." Two years lapse, no news. So I think that's where the Indian pace of action is. Compared to that the current prime minister is a whiz. I think we have to put (that) into perspective.
Edited excerpts from an interview with Prof Jagdish Bhagwati by Barkha Dutt, NDTV, in New York, September 23, 2015