Require full disclosure from practising professionals.

There is a lot of emphasis being put on disclosures by commercial organizations for the purpose of complete transparency, and rightly so.  A consumer who has to choose from organizations providing same services or products must be empowered to choose the best organization and must be able to base his decision on facts.  Regulators in many sectors have recognized this and are putting regulations in place for making such disclosures compulsory.

However such disclosure is conspicuously missing in the case of various professionals that provide services to individuals.  Such professionals include doctors, architects, lawyers etcetera.  Some of them merely hang a copy of their degree and a copy of their registration with the concerned professional body which give minimal information about the holder.  And one wouldn't be surprised if even these are not on display.

One of the many problems bogging down the country can be termed as apathy, or at best, indifference towards merit and quality.  Thus you can get admission to a professional course on the basis of merit, or on the basis of entitlements attaching to your caste, or on the basis of your parents' capacity to bankroll your way into a college.  The numbers in the latter two categories put together may outnumber those in the first category, namely, merit.

When these people set up their practice, a client has no way of knowing the stream through which they entered the college and got the degree / certificate that enables them to practice.  Customers often make a guess based on the surname of the practitioner which is absolutely wrong and erroneous.  It is quite possible that a person with a surname that indicates entitlement may have come through the general category purely on the basis of his merit.  Similarly it is quite possible that a person bearing a surname that doesn't indicate an entitlement may have muscled his way into the college through money power.  Also there may be clients who have strong convictions about entitlements and would only like to avail the services of one who made it through entitlement.

Accordingly all such professionals must be made to clearly, unambiguously and conspicuously display at their workplace the basis of their admission as well as their scores / grades.  This is the data on which a client can base his decision rationally.

I don't know if current regulations require this.  What we all know for sure is that this is not being done.  I propose that this be made mandatory.  Also there should be penalties for not doing so.

Our motto should be to promote innate merit, to cultivate merit wherever it can be and gradually discourage entitlement and money power as means of getting into a profession.

This seems to be happening through the social media where clients can share their experiences and rate a professional.  But the disclosures will help accelerate this process for newcomers for whom such data doesn't exist.