We Have a Few Reservations

The Economist:

FOR all the glories of its ancient civilisation, India has “a despicable history of inequity”. So says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a leading political scientist and, until this week, a member of the National Knowledge Commission, appointed by India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to advise his government. The phrase featured in Mr Mehta's eloquent letter of resignation, protesting at the government's determination to “reserve” 27% of the places in its colleges for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—lower castes, but not the very lowest, who already benefit. This policy, complained Mr Mehta in the letter, would ensure that India remained “entrapped in the caste paradigm.”

FOR all the glories of its ancient civilisation, India has “a despicable history of inequity”. So says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a leading political scientist and, until this week, a member of the National Knowledge Commission, appointed by India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to advise his government. The phrase featured in Mr Mehta's eloquent letter of resignation, protesting at the government's determination to “reserve” 27% of the places in its colleges for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—lower castes, but not the very lowest, who already benefit. This policy, complained Mr Mehta in the letter, would ensure that India remained “entrapped in the caste paradigm.”

Supporters of quotas argue that they have been successful in the southern states, where they have been used extensively. In Tamil Nadu, 69% of college places are reserved. But Mr Mehta argues that, in the north at least, the deprivations faced by the tribes and dalits are different from those suffered by the OBCs. For the latter, quotas are “condescending palliatives”.

In an unavailing effort to placate critics, the government has said that it will increase the total number of places in colleges, to ensure that no qualified student is worse off. Arithmetic dictates a 54% increase. No one knows where the necessary teachers, buildings and support services would come from.

A curious feature of the debate is the ignorance on which it is based. The Mandal commission assumed that OBCs made up 52% of the population. Yet a 1999 survey by the government's statistical organisation put the proportion at 32%, or 36% if Muslim OBCs were included. Of those enrolled in college, 23.5% were OBCs. So the under-representation of this group is not extreme. A television interviewer put these findings to Arjun Singh, the minister for human-resource development, architect of the latest reform. He could only waffle that “the OBCs form a fairly sizeable percentage of our population.”

Nor did he contradict research carried out by the elite Indian Institutes of Technology. This shows that one-half of the places they have reserved for dalits and tribal people are vacant. In those that are filled, one in four students do not complete their degrees. This indicates that the fundamental failure of Indian education is not discrimination in tertiary institutions; rather, it is the inability of primary and secondary schools to produce enough qualified students. Meanwhile, a shortage of well-qualified college graduates has become one of the biggest threats to the continued rapid growth of India's services and other industries, and hence to the booming economy.

The government's determination to extend reservations can be blamed on politics. Some close to the prime minister scent an effort by Arjun Singh to embarrass his boss, whose job he is widely reckoned to think should be his. Others see it as a concerted bid by the Congress party to win votes in India's caste-ridden largest state, Uttar Pradesh, where elections are due next year. Either way, the benefits for those justifiably angry at the deprivation and discrimination they suffer in India are likely to be marginal. Mr Mehta quoted Tom Paine: “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird.”

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 4, 2006 12:34 PM
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