Reservations

Some say on the basis of an outdated census, when Mr. BP Mandal gave in his recommendations on enhanced caste-based reservations for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in 1980---over and above the existing caste-based reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs)---in government jobs and institutions of higher learning supported by the government, little did he realise that it would become one of the most frought and hotly debated issues of independent India. The report recommended, among other things, that reservations for OBCs should be proportionate to their proportion in the population (i.e. about 52%). For almost 10 years, in fact, the document gathered dust in the Union Home Ministry, and then VP Singh, smarting against his political ostracization by the Congress, let the genie out of the bag by promising to implement it. In a single shot, the proportion of reserved seats would shoot up from 22% to 50%---just fitting the legal limit of 50% permitted by the Supreme Court of India.



The Bone Crushing Competition

An estimated 300,000 people take the Civil Services examination every year, to get into India's elite civil services cadre. Out of that just about 100 make it to the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and close to a 1000 manage to make it to any service at all. The success rate ? 0.03% if you take just the IAS and 0.3% if you take all the 12-odd services that recruit through this examination. For the IITs, only 3500 odd make it from the 300,000 odd who take the exam. In comparison, the 10% chances of getting into a Harvard Business School or the LSE makes them look like a walk in the park.


Injustice Everywhere

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" The Rev Martin Luther King had said. Though VP Singh implemented the enhanced reservations for OBCs in government jobs, he did not extend it to educational istitutions funded by government, which still reserved seats only for SCs and STs, and not for OBCs. So the quantum of reservation was only 22%. The rest were selected on merit, though the brutal competition kept out many meritorious students who could, given the resources, get into the top institutions for education in science and technology in the world without too much effort. The examination system has another flaw: people have to take the exam on a given day,which subjects the whole process to chance. If that day you had a headache or a stomach upset, you have to try again next year. Youngsters who don't get into the IITs usually get into other elite government engineering colleges (like the National Institutes of Technology, earlier known as Regional Engineering Colleges or RECs) or VJTI or the DCE.

But alas, what do venal politicians know about working hard and getting something on the basis of merit. Especially when the Minister in question is from an erstwhile 'royal' family. In the name of social welfare, the old coot has implemented caste-Ccentrally funded universities and autonomus institutions also. What is a little injustice if it yields votes though the intended beneficiaries may never even make it to the minimal criteria, given the abysmal state of most of India's state-run schools ? Some who gain entry through this route find it difficult to complete the course. This is a short-cut to demonstrate ' social inclusiveness' rather than fix the problem where it is really broken: access to quality primary education for the poorest, whereby they can compete for the best educational institutions; instead we have the government denying this right to other meritorious students, because they are born in the 'wrong' caste. Moreover, the government has not implemented the SC judgement properly - the SC categorically said that the 'creamy layer'---the proprtion of SCs, STs and OBCs who had benefited from reservations / social advantages in the past should be identified and excluded.

Not only will this unfair system dilute the quality and reputation of our institutions of higher learning, it is also a wider matter of concern for all public minded citizens - no society can hope to become great if it is unjust; if it chooses patronage over merit.

Making it Worse

Before I finish---what makes it worse is the paucity of institutions of higher learning in India. That is why there is this insane and brutal competition for a few seats, where again the government has imposed reservations. We simply need more institutions of higher learning, imparting globally recognised quality education. However, this cannot happen unless the government liberalizes the sector from the tyranny of the incompetent and, if media reports are to be believed, corrupt AICTE. Criteria for the entry of foreign universities has to be fixed and they should be allowed. The system should have a robust and independent accredition mechanism so that students can judge on their own. And most importantly, the existing IITs and IIMs need to be given more autonomy in the areas of fixing pay-scales and deciding their admission procedures and criteria. As they said in the stories of my childhood, "that, my friend, is another story that I shall tell you at a diferent time !"