Modern Professional Culture and Public Policy
It was a long read forward and it was forwarded many, many times before the caption many times appeared. One has to click on read more quite a few times to get at the bottom of it. It is safe to assume that most have seen it one way or other. Digital medium harps on new, creative and innovative content but most of its content is ‘old’ and changes forms, an email attachment becomes a forward or a post. Last month India’s parliament revised the price of the food served in its canteen. A plate that costed 25 odd ruppes would now cost 700 rs and so on and so forth. The abovementioned forward primarily found fault with the subsidy that was available to parliamentarians, when they ate food at canteen in the parliament.
So the demand that forward envisioned as great change has been met. The forward achieved its objective and yet no celebrations! The same government which has revised the prices of food in parliament canteen is bringing other changes; three farm laws, an announcement, intention and plan to sell other assets of state/government at much bigger scale, cutting down on role of government as an employer, basically a leaner and thinner state. Is the suggested connection between upward revision of food prices and ‘new’ policies stretching things a bit too far? ‘No free lunch’, ‘nothing comes for free’ is no longer an undercurrent in India but mainstream. The canon for public policy has been finally found?
Coming back to the forward about subsidised prices of food it was articulated as a grievance that professionals can legitimately have about politicians. It wasn’t just a petty grievance and presented itself as a rightful claim as it also faulted the regular increase in salaries of parliamentarians, the support for keeping staff and pensions. Going with the logic it presented, elected representatives were cornering an ‘unearned’ benefit, siphoning public resources, these costs to exchequer are contrary to common sense. Quite a few versions of forward reminded that being an elected and public representative is a service not a job and at times good old connection between authority and asceticism were added for taste.
Production of an item with utility and its consumption is a process which involves a series of acts and transactions. The food prices in the parliament canteen has been upwardly revised but producers of foods—farmers and the support they receive from state -- has not seen a proportionate increase. Is it so because they have already received their due? Have we arrived at a consensus about how to deal with this long process and the issue of ‘subsidy’ and other regulations has been settled?
Sell and auction, hire and fire and other market principles would be the sole guiding principle for state and public policy. Gradually social transactions would also align with this principle. The modern profession, how they earn their livelihood and their culture as public and social culture has finally arrived? Would it be appropriate here to ask in passing how is the economy doing and the state of jobs and its prospects? Or it is the pandemic that is lending support to this apparent consensus.
It would be not odd to mention that after 1991 reform-related issues has been in public domain and quite a few were hotly debated in India and elsewhere. The professionals and academicians in this field have not pronounced a triumph of one set of actions about public policy and decisions as final. The debate and experiments is very much on, as far as the awareness of the writer of this excursion extends. Few days back one school girl talking about revision in her syllabus pointed out that contentious and consensus is not the same thing.
An excursion must remain an excursion, so let’s avoid difficult and complex issues or rehearsing positions and views.
The stream in which that forward was immersed has professional English written all over it. But it could have easily wrapped itself around the language of clean and honest politics—a politics of delivery of public services. Without forcing a contrast with politics of delivery of public services, recollect other forms politics assumes: politics of identity and recognition and the writer is unsure whether it is still safe in India to add politics of redistribution.
A concrete example of honest and clean politics and professionals taking the role of elected and public representative is AAP. And AAP promises and talks about reduction in amount of bills, when one consumes public utilities and better quality service, instead of parading no free lunch and nothing comes for free!
Even a politics primarily about delivery of public services processes the issue of subsidy, benefit, reward and distribution differently and it seems even the poor understand it. Simplification and over-simplification should not be allowed to compete with each other.
Forging a modern professional culture in hierarchical and pre modern societies is not easy and profession related issues continue to beset them. Is there any profession in India that has a viable, functional culture for its followers? Though it is undeniable that the existence and expansion of professionals may have germinated standards that can ground more wider claims.
An excursion can be an adventure akin to a profession and a career, it may as well loose its course and fritter away. Bear in mind that no free lunch, nothing comes for free are standards of distribution and other variations of similar thought is a mainstay of professionals. Can a modern professional culture inform and guide public policy?
A modern professional culture aspires to reward continued interest, hard work and commitment, treating its practioners as equals while celebrating merit and talent. It finds its trainees and apprentices as socialised beings and must find a way to remould them.
Is ‘ragging’ an attempt to mould novices into a
modern professional culture or mark a modern profession as different from
traditional occupations and professional roles? Bringing ragging as an example
here is both evocative and provocative and this excursion intends to do that. Take
for example, medical profession, where they learn how to ‘treat’ a body. This learning, skill and knowledge
is different from or at odds with what they have learnt about body from society,
religion and its philosophy. Doctors are not tantriks playing with skull espousing a particular philosophy of life for example.
Apart from medical and engineering colleges ragging
till recently was a function of how technical an institution was. Ragging and
its intensity demarcated the technical colleges and institutions from other
streams of modern professional learning. One can still found the oldies in
profession relating ‘lack’ in students to inappropriate ragging by seniors. Professional standard and their culture used to
have this stage-ragging by seniors-- for initiation into a modern
professional field. Ragging may have been a blotched attempt to introduce newcomers into a distinct professional culture but boss and sir stays with them.
Aspiring and professional Engineers with their modern measuring tools and doctors failed to negotiate and mention caste while learning a modern discipline. Doctors
dissected the body and picked their skills from dead and diseased bodies but could not process caste and its dynamics. A failure
to negotiate caste while learning a modern profession does not mean that it is/was
forgotten or given less importance. Mess, canteens and food were divided
according to caste in technical and other institutions. Hostel accommodation,
support groups, clientele, professional bodies existed side by side and mostly according
to caste and in other cases religion.
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