Arjun Singh's announcement on 5th of April about reservations for OBC's in Centre funded educational Institutes of Higher Learning has started quite a debate. I have followed this debate in the press, TV news Channels and on the internet with great interest, and I am still not satisfied.
Reservations have been an emotional issue since the days of the British. If you remember school history they were first introduces as a solution to separate electorates in the 1930's. Reservations in Governmental jobs and educational institutes were introduced by VP singh on the recommendations of the Mandal commission. The first wave of reservation was greated by self-immolation of young students in Delhi.
Fifteen years have passed and this time the issue is much more serious. What is different this time is that the OBC's will be at the receiving end of the charity and the total scope of reservation will reach 49.5%.
Its no wonder then that there has been passionate pleading from both the supporters and the opposers of this move. The problem with this debate as I see it is that it has been more of a rabble-rousing, emotional inciting then a logical persuasive way of making the other side understand your point of view.
Both sides have been using anecdotal evidence to promote their cause and recalling hearsay and extreme stereotypes of the opposing camp to malign them. It just so happens that those who are opposing this move, tend to be better looking, more educated and are used to captivating others with their sophisticated and suave ways.(for example look here)
The supporters will talk about B R Ambedkar, and how he gave a voice to millions of Dalits. They will remind us that the so called education institutes produce professional who will happily sell their soul and leave for America for a Dollar Salary. The opposers will introduce anecdotal evidence about how students from the reserved categories fail to keep up with the work at IIT.
I will not get into specifics as I am not an expert on these issues, but I will try to look at some of the arguments as logically and rationally as I can.
1] The Supporters point out that the Upper Casts make up only about 16% of the countries population, but their fraction in the professional as well as higher educational streams is more then the proverbial Lion's share. I agree with this point, but not with the conclusions drawn from it.
Let me give an example. The Parsees are a miniscule portion of India's populace, but they have been responsible for so much. According to one study, 7% of India's population depends directly or indirectly on the TATA group of their daily bread. They have been responsible for so many institutions that are well cherished in Mumbai..... Most of the capital in the stock market is held by people form Gujarat.
While the statistic that, there is such a miniscule proportion of the disadvantaged sector in the higher institutes of learning, is shocking, these people fail to follow their logic and ask for the same data from the 10+2 and Graduation level. They do not want to talk about the reasons behind these numbers. I can't see how you can solve the problems without going into its causes. Its like a doctor giving cough medicine to a patient who is coughing without ascertaining whether the patient has AIDS, TB or just plain flu.
2] The opposers of the move regale us with tales of reserved seats candidates doing badly at IIT/IIM. I can't use this as a factor in reaching my decision, as there is no hard evidence. All I am asking for is some Freakonomics type of research. Here is how someone can do it. Take data containing marks for all years from say 3 IIT's, 3 IIM's 3 NIT's and 5 Medical colleges from the last 15 years and 5 other colleges and see if their is some correlation between the scores of those who got in on Merit and those who got in on Reservations. Further more you could actually then see how both the groups progressed and you could even see how much each group improved over the duration of the course after normalizing scores for each group separately. After someone does this study, use this data to actually see how helpful reservations have been for those who have benefited from them.
3] The supporters claim that these institutes have been set up by the Government to help India. Sorry they have not been set up for this purpose. Look at the mission statement of IIMA let me quote: IIMA's mission is to help India and other developing countries improve their managerial practices....Objectives:...To provide learning facilities to men and women of exceptional calibre for pursuing careers in management or becoming teachers and researchers in different management fields.I don't read anywhere.. Help Indian citizens get better jobs...or anything like that. At most they say...To participate in and contribute to the formulation of public policy, which would provide answers to questions of social importance. These reservations at this time seem to be a political gimmick without actually any thought being put into it. It seems there is more to this announcement than is visible [I am talking about Arjun Singh's political ambitions]
It’s not as if anyone wants to help the OBC's. As I see it, no one is questioning why in the first place so few people of these particular casts fail to score high on the entrance tests. Is it because they can't put as many hours in to study as those of the higher casts do? Or is it because they lack certain skills which those from the higher casts are gifted with. Or is it genetic and their brains work in a different way then others and hence they can't score as high? [Like blacks scoring lower on the SAT's in the US]. Further more, aren't these entrance tests an indication of how well you have done so far? And wouldn't there be a high chance that this level of performing would be carried over in the future?
When I look back at this, I wonder why I staunchly support reservations on the basis of sex but not cast. I think it is so because I fear that these concessions will not be used by those who actually need them, but by those who are already empowered. This is why I would strongly support reservation based on economic status. I believe that once you become rich enough [how rich is a different question] you should stop being a burden on the government and society. This is an important issue and we all need more inputs before we can decide on it.
