E-Paper
Schism threatens stir
A VERTICAL divide is threatening the anti-quota movement in the GSVM Medical College as the under-graduate students are likely to return to the college on May 31. Also, members of the Indian Medical Association have almost made up their minds which side they would go to in case there is a split in the association on the issue of reservation.
A VERTICAL divide is threatening the anti-quota movement in the GSVM Medical College as the under-graduate students are likely to return to the college on May 31. Also, members of the Indian Medical Association have almost made up their minds which side they would go to in case there is a split in the association on the issue of reservation.
According to sources, there is a rift among protesters and if some senior professors are to be believed, then a divide on caste lines among teachers and students has already surfaced.
However, the medical college administration, in association with senior faculty, is working overnight to maintain the academic environment of the medical college.
On the other side, a schism in the IMA city chapter was evident when it organised an anti-reservation rally here in the city a few days back. Some members of the IMA, hailing from OBC category, who had attended the meeting prior to the rally, lamented the IMA taking up this cause, according to a former secretary of the IMA who had attended that meeting and rally.
Some members of IMA who hailed from Other Backward Castes kept away from the rally.
Now with over a dozen medicos and IITians attended the meeting in New Delhi, the anti-reservation protest is likely to be intensified as the students have started getting support from a large section of the society.
A senior professor of the medical college said, “If it becomes a battle of our survival, we won’t mind vertical division and if it happens the government would be responsible for it, which is suppressing chance for talent in the country.”
Though senior office-bearers of the IMA and faculty of GSVM medical college are trying their level best to maintain consensus, when asked what they would do in case of a vertical divide, most of them said, “We are helpless, as no literate person wants reservation unless he is financially weak but these political leaders and parties have created a divide in society.”
Meanwhile, a student of the medical college who attended the meeting at AIIMS in New Delhi said that there were about 30,000 students from various parts of the country who gathered in the national capital against the government’s quota politics.
