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 back ward 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 VP Singh government
more than 15 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.
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 suboptimal 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 fulfil 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 the
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. n