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The latest frenzy that is being whipped up in the media,
especially in the English language press and on television,
relates to the proposal mooted by the Ministry of Human
Resource Development to provide quotas for backward
castes in all institutions of higher learning funded
by the central government.
The
resulting storm of protest has brought back all the
now familiar arguments that became so prominent at the
time of the implementation of the Mandal Commission
Report by the V. P. Singh government more than fifteen
years ago. Incredibly, it seems that little has changed
since then - either in social realities or in public
prejudices especially among the middle classes and elite
groups.
The empirical evidence points squarely to the strong
and still pervasive persistence of social discrimination
(which can be related to, but is not the same as, economic
disparity) in India. So extensive is this, that few
would deny the reality of continued discrimination and
exclusion. It is also widely accepted across the world
that diversity makes educational institutions not only
more interesting, but intellectually richer, more effective
and therefore of better quality overall. So the debate
is really about the precise form that affirmative action
should take.
The most common criticism of a reservation policy is
that it militates against the promotion of merit. It
is worth considering this in more detail. There is no
question that there is huge excess demand for higher
education in India, and quality education is extremely
under-provided. Therefore, there is severe rationing
in operation for places, especially in the best institutions.
The question is therefore not one of whether we should
have rationing or not, but, which form of rationing
would be best in the prevailing social circumstances.
It is currently believed that the current system is
based on ''merit'', that is, ranking of performance in
all-India entrance examinations or similar such criteria.
Yet any teacher or administrator at some of these top
institutions (such as IITs or IIMs) will agree that
there are typically several hundred candidates of equally
good quality at the top, and they are able to admit
only a small fraction of them, so that there is a large
element of luck and randomness in the process of selection.
It is also well known, incidentally, that these entrance
tests typically test not intelligence or ability in
the subject per se, but a certain aptitude for answering
such tests, which itself is a skill that can be learnt,
and for which there now exist training institutes all
over the country. Such training in turn costs time and
money, which effectively excludes most potential candidates.
What is notable in this apparently ''socially neutral''
process, however, is that still in India, our institutions
of higher learning are dominated by students from upper
castes traditionally associated with more education.
This points to an undercurrent of discrimination running
through the system, such that the student population
in higher education is far too socially homogenous,
generally representing social groups that make up about
20 per cent of the population as a whole.
If we accept that intelligence and talent are not the
monopoly of any particular social group but are normally
distributed across society, then this means that the
current system is being inefficient since it is effectively
picking up candidates from only a small section of society
instead of the whole population. It is elementary logic
that this would give sub-optimal results for society.
This is an argument on social efficiency grounds, which
is quite separate from other arguments about creating
a more democratic and inclusive education process in
general.
Those who oppose the policy of reservation operate primarily
with the following arguments. First, that it generates
perceptions of ''victimhood'' and encourages democratically
undesirable identity politics. Second, that there are
inequalities within the specified communities, which
allow a ''creamy layer'' to take advantage of the reservations
and benefit unduly while depriving the rest of the community.
Third, that the rigid and inflexible nature of the instrument
of reservation does not allow for more creative modes
of affirmative action which would actually bring in
a wider range of excluded people. Fourth, that it leads
to privileging of some caste-based discrimination while
ignoring other and possibly more undesirable forms of
exclusion. Fifth, that it compresses the notion of social
justice into only reservation, instead of encompassing
broader socio-economic policies such as land reform
and other asset redistribution, strategies of income
generation, etc.
There is certainly some relevance to each of these points,
and no one would deny that the system that has operated
in India thus far has been inadequate not only in addressing
these issues, but even in achieving the goals set in
terms of filling the allocated quotas even in public
education and employment. This is also partly because
there has been no institutional mechanism of incentives
and disincentives to ensure effective affirmative action.
There are ''legal'' requirements for filling certain quotas,
but there are no penalties for public institutions that
do not fill them, or rewards for those that more than
fulfill them.
However, while reservations have been inadequate and
relatively rigid instruments of affirmative action,
they do have certain advantages which explain why they
are still preferred. They are transparent, inexpensive
to implement and monitor and therefore easily enforceable.
Any other system of affirmative action must have these
attributes in order to be practical. The problem with
other systems that are being proposed - such as those
based on periodic audit of institutions to check on
their ''diversity'' - is that they do not have equal transparency
and enforceability.
That is why we still need reservations for different
groups in higher education - not because they are the
perfect instrument to rectify long-standing discrimination,
but because they are still they most workable method
to move in this direction. And most of all, because
the nature of Indian society ensures that without such
measures, social discrimination and exclusion will only
persist and be strengthened.
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