Union HRD minister Arjun Singh’s proposal to decree a 27 percent quota for OBC students in IITs, IIMs and Central universities has provoked widespread indignation countrywide, and campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests. Dilip Thakore reports

For the great majority of India’s students constitutionally barred from availing quotas and reservation in institutions of higher education, the world’s toughest entrance examinations are all set to get tougher. On April 5 Union human resource development (aka education) minister Arjun Singh — often described as India’s perpetual prime minister in waiting — grabbed headlines and prime-time coverage in the national media with a bombshell announcement that the 17-party coalition United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has approved his ministry’s proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent of capacity in all Central government promoted universities and institutes (JNU, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc) for OBC (other backward castes) students. “The decision was taken by the prime minister and the cabinet. Parliament has passed a law; we are implementing it,” Singh told a television news channel. 

This seemingly innocuous and politically correct declaration of intent has precipitated a veritable rain of editorials, op-ed articles and analyses by media pundits, educationists and sociologists (see box p.32), because positive discrimination or affirmative action favouring castes and tribes which suffered discrimination and deprivation for centuries under the hitherto rigid Hindu varna or caste system, is a provenly explosive issue in Indian politics. Following this announcement which has also provoked the wrath of the Central Election Commission, the National Knowledge Commission and reportedly prime minister Manmohan Singh (who has maintained a studied silence on the subject), campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests.

The last time round in 1990 when the then prime minister V. P. Singh pulled a forgotten decade old report of the Mandal Commission recommending varsity and government job reservations for backward castes (other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) for whom 22.5 percent of available seats have been reserved since 1950) commensurate to their population out of the mothballs, the student community in north India in particular responded with nationwide street and campus rioting.

Inevitably the legality of the government jobs reservation order was challenged and while allowing reservation for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, the Supreme Court imposed a 50 percent ceiling on reservations in government employment (and education instit-utions). The short-lived Janata Dal fell soon after in 1990 following violent anti-government demonstrations and especially after one student committed suicide by immolation, and the issue of additional reservations for OBC students in Central government educational institutions was put on the backburner by the successor Congress government headed by Narasimha Rao.

Meanwhile down south, state governments pursued their own reservation policies with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka reserving more than 50 percent of capacity in higher education institutions for SCs, STs and OBC students. Now as five states prepared to go to the polls in April-May, Arjun Singh has suddenly invoked the Supreme Court judgement in Indira Sawhney vs Union of India (AIR 1993 SC 477) and proposed reservation for OBCs (within the total 50 percent ceiling imposed by the apex court) in Central government institutions of tertiary education. Hence the gathering storm in middle class India for whom the open merit quota will be reduced from 77.5 to 50.5 percent, if the proposal is accepted by Parliament.

Unsurprisingly the reaction of the captains of Indian industry who look to institutions of academic excellence, particularly the IIMs and IITs for industry-ready graduates — to whom they are ready, willing and able to pay sky-high start-up salaries — has been hostile. Speaking to reporters on April 8 on the sidelines of the convocation ceremony of the state-of-the-art private industry promoted Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Ratan Tata chairman of the Tata group of market leader companies (aggregate annual revenue: Rs.80,000 crore) said: “Everyone should be concerned about improving the quality of life. But reservation is not the way to do it. We need to create a country of equal opportunities by creating more (educational) opportunities for the benefit of the deprived classes so they can come on a par with others.”

Likewise Rahul Bajaj chairman of the Pune-based Bajaj Auto (annual sales revenue: Rs. 6,400 crore) condemned the additional quota for OBCs as “a political move”, motivated by vote bank politics. According to Bajaj, introduction of additional reservation in educational institutions and industry would “erode the quality and competitiveness of the country”.

Arjun Singh’s bombshell April 5 announcement that the Union cabinet and the “prime minister personally” have approved the proposal to carve out an additional 27 percent reservation quota in Central government institutions of higher education, is being interpreted as the last hurrah of this octogenerian Congress party Nehruvian loyalist who is reportedly nursing a grievance because his prime ministerial ambitions have been repeatedly ignored by the Congress Party. But by resurrecting the spectre of Mandal without any warning, he has rocked the Congress boat so violently that almost the entire establishment has turned against him. 

Box 1

OBC reservation: What the pundits say

Willy-nilly the institutions may be driven to running separate sections for reserved and merit students, so that teaching could be accomplished at a level commensurate with the intellect of students. This is bound to see friction among the faculty as to who will teach in which section – V. Raghunathan, a former professor of IIM Ahmedabad in Times of India (April 13)

We will now witness the horrible spectacle of states falling over each other to play the reservation card. It is perhaps too much to expect that we will ever get political leaders who have the courage to shape public discourse. But the least this government could have done was to not wilfully exacerbate the rot – Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president Centre for Policy Research in Indian Express (April 7)

During its discussions the (Mandal) Commission was fully aware that reservations were only a palliative, and 27 percent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs was only one of several recommendations. Briefly the other important recommendations were: radical alteration in production relations through progressive land reforms; special educational facilities to upgrade the cultural environment of the students, with special emphasis on vocational training; separate coaching facilities for students aspiring to enter technical and professional institutions; creation of adequate facilities for improving the skills of village artisans; subsidised loans for setting up small-scale industries; the setting up of a separate chain of financial and technical bodies to assist OBC entrepreneurs. None of these measures were even casually examined by the government, and then prime minister V.P.Singh adopted the facile and populist route of issuing a one-para order conferring the boon of 27 percent reservations on OBCs – S.S. Gill, former secretary, Mandal Commission in Indian Express (April 13)

Such political opportunism masquerading as social concern deserves to be strongly attacked because it has the potential to greatly undermine even the modest gains made in higher education in India. Instead of helping the institutions of excellence to grow and compete with the best in the world, the political class has just transferred upon them the burden of its own failure to deliver good quality education to all children at the primary and secondary level – Editorial, Indian Express (April 17)

It is mistimed in the sense that after 12 years of bad education, you want to help the student get into a centre of excellence. He or she needs help at the beginning and during schooling. Do something there – Dr. P.V. Indiresan, former director IIT-Madras

According to a news report in the Indian Express (April 9) Sam Pitroda, reportedly the architect of the Congress party’s unexpected electoral triumph in the general election of 2004 and currently chairman of the high-powered National Knowledge Commission which was constituted last August to transform the country into a 21st century knowledge society with special reference to upgrading higher education institutions (see EW November 2005 cover story), was “kept in the dark” by the HRD ministry about this purported cabinet decision. Reacting, Pitroda described Arjun Singh’s announcement as “a very important issue… fraught with long-term implications”. “We definitely need more discussion and debate on this issue. We as a commission will be taking a collective view on this only after we meet in the first week of May. We will prepare a paper on affirmative action in 90 days. When I meet the prime minister, I will convey our views,” he said.

But while Pitroda preferred to be guarded in his response, forthright condemnation by Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, member secretary of the Knowledge Commission of “the grotesque manner in which the state is destroying institutions of higher education” indicates the way the wind is blowing within the high-powered commission. Arguing that OBCs are not on the same footing as historically deprived SCs and STs and that many OBCs are “akin to what used to be dominant castes”, Mehta warns that granting them reservation would work “against the interests of SCs and STs”. “One sometimes wonders whether ministers and bureaucrats even have a sense of what ails our education systems. All the good work the UPA (government) is trying to do will come to naught if it bequeaths a legacy of destroyed institutions unable to fulfill India’s need and potential,” wrote Mehta, the Harvard and Princeton educated director of Centre for Policy Research, Delhi in theIndian Express (April 7).

Although populist politicians who during the past half century since independence have dumbed down and devalued all the nation’s institutions including Parliament, the judiciary, the police and the country’s universities tend to dismiss critics of affirmative action as prejudiced, self-serving ‘elitists’, it is absurd to believe that the highly qualified, deeply learned and committed educationists who have made huge financial sacrifices to live and teach in India (unlike a host of Indian academics including Amartya Sen who teach abroad), can’t be objective and are advancing motivated criticism. It is indisputable that individuals such as Pitroda and Mehta are learned social scientists and have excellent track records of public service.

Delhi-based Dr. P.V. Indiresan an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Science and Birmingham University, former director of IIT-Madras, now in his autumnal years and who “four times rejected offers to teach abroad for the pleasure of teaching India’s best students” laments that “insincere politicians” seem to have little respect for the very few institutional brands such as the IIMs, IITs, and AIIMS, painstakingly built after independence. “Admission into the IITs on the basis of caste rather than merit is ill-advised because after providing 12 years of poor quality (school) education to SCs, STs and OBCs, champions of reservation want to help them to get into centres of academic excellence. The truth is that utterly neglected backward caste students need help in their school years, therefore the focus should be on improving their foundational education. Determining admissions into the country’s most reputable academic institutions is like picking your best cricket eleven. How can you select someone whose fundamentals and early training is not up to the mark? Such policies mean that intelligent people don’t have the right to excel. When they are lumped together with average and less intelligent students, their creativity is strangulated,” says Indiresan.

Certainly there is a strong case for the Union HRD ministry whose two most recent incumbents (Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi and Arjun Singh) have exhibited all the restraint of rampaging bulls in the fragile china shop of Indian education, to pay greater heed to hands-on academics. At ground zero level inside institutions of academic repute, the ramifications of reserved quotas are far more complex than bureaucrats can ever imagine.

Comments V. Raghunathan former professor of finance at IIM-Ahmedabad and currently chief executive of the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, writing in the Times of India (April 13): “In any class representing a mix of merit and reservation students, one is always presented with the challenge of where to pitch a lecture. If you cater to the merit group, the reserved group is unable to keep up. If you slow down to the reserved group’s level, you risk resentment from the merit group. Moreover it also takes away the challenge that attracts one to teach in these institutions — the adrenalin that flows from matching one’s wits with the best.”

Undoubtedly if Arjun Singh’s proposal to reserve additional 27 percent of capacity in excellent institutions of education for OBC students is legislated by Parliament, the already acute shortage of adequately qualified faculty in the IIMs, IITs in particular will accentuate. The brightest and best academics who teach in government institutions at considerable financial sacrifice are unlikely to want to teach dull-witted classes under ubiquitous ministerial supervision. Inevitably standards of education dispensed by such institutions will fall.

Box 2
Summary history of institutional reservations
The issue of reservation of specific capacities or quotas in institutions of higher education and government employ-ment for socially and educationally backward classes and communities which had for centuries, if not millennia, been denied opportunities for advancement by the rigid, birth-defined Hindu caste or varna system was extensively debated by the learned members of the constituent assembly which drafted the Constitution of India, written after the nation obtained freedom from British rule in 1947.

The Constitution which was adopted by Parliament in 1950 espoused liberal values such as the equality before law of all citizens and proscribed discrimination on the basis of class, caste, gender, religion and community. Yet at the behest of legal luminary and leader of the most backward castes Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who played a major role in framing the Constitution, the constituent assembly agreed that the cause of social justice and equity would be served if the State (i.e the Central, state and local governments) exercised positive discrimination or affirmative action in favour of the lowest rung ‘untouchable’ castes which had been historically denied all opportunity for socio-economic advancement.

Accordingly while Article 14 of the Constitution guaranteed all citizens equality before the law and proscribed the State from all types of discrimination, Articles 15 and 16 permitted positive discrimination in favour of “any socially or educationally backward classes of citizens” and of designated tribes and castes (SCs and STs) enumerated in Schedule 5, particularly in terms of reserved quotas in institutions of higher education and government jobs. The understanding was that after these communities were socially rehabilitated, positive discrimination in their favour would be discontinued. However Parliament has not as yet thought it fit to rescind affirmative action which reserves 22.5 percent of capacity in government institutions of higher education and government employment for them.

In the 1970s with the economy growing at a mere 3.5 percent per year, other historically underprivileged castes which had been confined to their traditional professions (cobblers, washermen etc) by the Hindu varna system formed political parties to press for education and employment reservation for OBCs (other backward castes). These caste-based political parties were successful in capturing power in several states such as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in particular, and emerged as strong political formations in others.

Following sustained pressure by these new caste-based parties for reservation, in the late 1970s, a commission was appointed under the chairmanship of a mid-level politician, B.P. Mandal to examine the claim of OBCs for reservation. When the commission submitted its report in 1980, it recommended additional reservation for OBCs in government employment and institutions of higher education. At that time the recommendations of the commission were adjudged impractical and put into cold storage by prime minister Indira Gandhi.

In the late 1980s following the ouster of the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre in the general election of 1988, a coalition Janata Dal government led by former finance minister V.P. Singh was voted into office in Delhi. In 1990 after dissensions erupted within the Janata Dal government, prime minister V. P. Singh resurrected the Mandal Commission’s report and decreed a 27 percent quota in Central government employment for OBCs, citing the authority of Article 16(4) of the Constitution which authorises the State to take affirmative action in favour of “any backward classes of citizens”.

This decree aroused considerable indignation across the country, particularly in the Hindi heartland states where student agitations and rioting resulted in the resignation of the V.P. Singh government. Coterminously several writ petitions were filed in the courts challenging the government order of additional reservation in favour of OBCs.

The spate of writ petitions were grouped together and heard by a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in 1992. In its majority judgement in Indra Sawhney vs. Union of India (AIR SC 477), the court held that while the government is entitled to make provision for OBCs in public employment, the interests of organisational and institutional efficiency demand that total reservations in favour of backward classes/ castes should not exceed 50 percent of all employees. That’s the law as it stands today although in several states where reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs exceeds 69 percent, it is practised more in the breach than observance.

Almost a decade later on April 5, 2006 for reasons best known to himself, Union HRD minister Arjun Singh advanced the proposal that an additional 27 percent quota (which would not violate the ceiling of 50 percent decreed by the Supreme Court) should be reserved for OBCs in Central government institutions of higher education. This proposal, which has reportedly irked the Election Commission and the prime minister, is currently pending cabinet and parliamentary approval.

Academic morale in institutions of education excellence is also likely to be adversely affected by general awareness that students admitted under reserved categories are seldom genuinely needy or deserving. One of the open secrets of campus India is that the majority of students admitted under reserved quotas are hardly from socio-economic backward classes. Invariably they tend to be from the “creamy layer” (a description of the Supreme Court) of SCs, STs – and if this additional reservation proposal is legislated — from creamy layer OBCs. Typically students admitted under reserved category quotas tend to be the progeny of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen who have prospered through affirmative action and push their less-than-meritorious offspring into top-rung, highly subsidised institutions through the back door. In the process tens of thousands of high scoring merit students are denied admission. Now if an additional 27 percent of seats in Central government institutions (which tend to provide better quality education than state government aided institutions) is reserved for OBCs, a larger number of merit students are likely to be crowded out.

But if middle class anger is building up against Arjun Singh for making the access of merit students into the prized IITs, IIMs and Central universities harder, the 93rd Amendment which overrules the well-considered full bench judgements of the Supreme Court in the TMA Pai Foundation (2002), Islamic Academy (2003) and P.A. Inamdar (2005) cases will make it harder for middle class merit students to access even the best privately promoted institutions of education. In these three cases after careful consideration, the Supreme Court ruled that the State (i.e Central and state governments) is constitutionally debarred from imposing caste or class quotas upon and prescribing tuition fees of privately-promoted, financially independent institutions of professional education subject to the proviso that they are fair, transparent and reasonable.

Evidently outraged by the lese majeste of independent educationists who dared to question government control and micro-management of privately promoted institutes of higher education, on December 21 last year Parliament as a whole — cutting across party lines — unanimously passed the 93rd Amendment Act. Under a new clause (5) added to Article 15 of the Constitution, the Central and state governments are now empowered to make “any special provision by law for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, or for SCs and STs” in admissions to all education institutions “including private educational institutions, whether aided or unaided”, minority-promoted institutions excepted.

The proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent of capacity (22.5 percent is already reserved for SCs and STs) in Central government institutions of higher education is the first initiative under the new Article 15 (5) of the Constitution. Quite obviously Singh believes that “socially and educationally backward classes” are synonymous with OBCs as defined by the Mandal Commission. The fact that across the country OBCs have grouped themselves into powerful and consolidated vote banks is no doubt a coincidence.

This assumption of the HRD minister is questioned by former chief justice of India V. N. Khare. According to Khare who adjudicated the TMA Pai (2002) and Islamic Academy (2003) cases in the Supreme Court, the phrase “socially and educationally backward classes” has been “twisted” by Arjun Singh and made synonymous with OBCs. “The interpretation of the (TMA) Pai judgement means there can be reservation for the weaker sections, but there never was a mention of OBC. The Constitution doesn’t define or recognise OBC, it’s a government interpretation,” Khare told the Indian Express (April 10).

Evidently in his haste to boost his popularity with the electorally rich OBC vote bank, Arjun Singh has seriously underestimated the complexity of the new quota reservation proposal. “Apart from the fact that the Constitution is conspicuously silent about OBC or other backward castes or classes, in the landmark Indira Sawhney Case the Supreme Court took pains to emphasise the need to exclude the ‘creamy layers’ from any reservation policy. Thus when the additional reservation policy is challenged in the courts as is inevitable, the government will not only have to satisfy the court that OBCs as a class fall within the ambit of the new Article 15(5) of the Constitution which alludes to ‘socially and educationally backward classes’, but also ensure that reservation is availed only by deserving students within the class depending upon the nature and gravity of their backwardness,” says Aditya Sondhi an alumnus of the National Law School University of India, Bangalore and currently senior counsel of the Karnataka high court.

Although for political vote-catching purposes, identification of OBCs with “socially and educationally backward classes” is convenient, the social reality as contended by Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta (quoted earlier) and others is that many of the castes listed in the Mandal Commission report of 1980, have since advanced socially and in some states notably Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, have become the dominant land-owning castes, even if they have tended to neglect education. The most conspicuous examples of such social advancement are the Yadavs of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and the Vokkaligas of Karnataka who are listed as OBCs.

It is the prospect of creamy layer students from politically dominant and relatively asset rich OBCs entering institutions of education excellence through the quota back door, which is bitterly resented by India’s upwardly mobile middle class and could well spark a Mandal II students revolt. However Dr. G Thimmaiah former vice chancellor of Bangalore, member of the Planning Commission (1996-98) and author of Power Politics & Justice Backward Classes in Karnataka (Sage Publications, 1994) is of the opinion that the righteous indignation of merit proponents is somewhat over hyped.

“The ground level reality is that most entrance exam toppers are from affluent urban households who can afford intensive tutoring provided by expensive coaching institutes which are not accessible to SCs, STs and other socially and educationally backward communities. Therefore after due deliberation and consideration the framers of the Constitution quite rightly guaranteed quotas in government jobs and education institutions for them in Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution. However it’s true that the implemen-tation of reservations has been distorted with generations of the creamy layer grabbing concessional opportunities and shutting out the really deserving. Therefore the entire reservation policy needs to be reviewed to define and exclude the creamy layer from availing reserved quotas in government jobs and education institutions. With this in mind in its Mandal Case judgement (i.e Indira Sawhney’s Case) the Supreme Court had recommended the formation of commissions to periodically review OBC lists. But these sporadically appointed commissions have only made additions to OBC lists without making any deletions. That’s why the widespread middle class resistance to reservation,” says Thimmaiah.

Box 3

Additional reservation: Student opinions

It is unfair that while many general aspirants who study hard won’t get selected due to the intense competition, some candidates will have it easy because of their caste. Ever since the announcement was made, we have become aware of backward caste students in our classes. This has adversely affected our friendships – Prateek Tiwari, student, St Paul’s College, Lucknow

A 22.5 percent reservation for scs, sts and obcs in higher educational institutions including IITs, IIMs and Central government institutions is welcome. Reserved quotas above this percentage will lower academic standards. Admission should be based on merit and given only to those OBC students who have scored the common eligibility marks fixed by admitting institutions – Arvind Babu, OBC student of Anna University, Chennai

Reserved caste quota is a political ploy to divide students on caste lines — to create a ‘them’ and ‘us’. At present, caste is not even in our imagination, it is nowhere in the campuses, but quota politics may change that. Therefore we will resist it – Karan Aneja, student of Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Every time elections are announced, greedy and shameless politicians resort to divisive scheming. Caste should have become redundant a long time ago. Government has failed to provide universal elementary education even after it was made a basic right. Scheming politicians must be exposed to save the secular credentials of our educational institutions – Devika Malik, student, Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi

Quota will be used to divide students for political ends and is nothing but a cover-up of repeated government failure in providing social justice. Primary education should be the focus area to improve the lot of the poor masses. By making reservations in tertiary institutions nothing substantial can be achieved. Quota is a gimmick and we know it – Gursimran Khamba, student, Delhi College of Art & Commerce

United students is a group opposing quotas in higher education and is a platform for voices against the OBC quota. We have been successful in mobilising support in Delhi, and are working to unite students across the country against what we believe is a dangerous political stunt to divide students and lower the prestige of the country’s best higher education institutions – Pankaj Gupta, convenor United Students, Delhi

All this indicates that there’s greater complexity to the issue of reservations for the underprivileged than has been assumed by Union HRD minister Arjun Singh who has irresponsibly recommended an additional 27 percent quota in Central government education institutions for OBCs as a quick-fix solution to the education deprivation of the poor and socially disadvantaged.

Indeed the cavalier assumption that all OBCs are socio-economically disadvantaged, flies in the face of facts and is an indicator that the driving force behind this proposal is populist vote-bank politics rather than bona fide concern for genuinely poor and meritorious students. Given that the 93rd Amendment piloted through Parliament by Singh specifically excludes (religious) minority institutions from making reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, there’s considerable substance in the charge that Singh is making a determined bid to emerge as a champion of the backward castes and minorities. But quite obviously he hasn’t learned the lessons of contemporary history. Like former prime minister V.P. Singh who resurrected the ghost of Mandal in 1990, Arjun Singh may also consolidate the Hindu vote behind the opposition BJP.

Yet petty political calculations and manoeuvring aside, educationists and social scientists need to weigh the probable impact of the additional reservation proposal pending before the Union cabinet and government, upon India’s few surviving institutions of academic excellence. Quite clearly if 22.5 percent of students in institutions of academic excellence are less than meritorious, they can be raised to levels of excellence. But if half their student population comprise non-merit students, dilution of academic standards is inevitable.

The challenge before Indian academia and the intelligentsia is to smooth the access of the large number of meritorious but poor students across the country into the nation’s highly subsidised institutions of academic excellence. This requires the provision of quality foundational primary and secondary education for all followed by painstaking and fool-proof merit and means testing, prior to grant of admission into institutions of higher education. Contrary to the HRD minister’s belief, there is no instant solution to this conundrum.

Rather than ensuring social justice and equity, the prime objective of the HRD ministry should be to address the supply side of higher education while simultaneously upgrading academic and research activities in India’s 380 universities, 15,800 colleges and other institutions to global standards. Legislating additional caste quotas will surely dilute academic standards and generate social tensions in campus India and society in general, especially if state governments follow suit. As yet Union HRD minister Arjun Singh’s recommendation to create an additional quota for OBCs in Central government education institutions is a mere proposal. The national interest demands it is rejected. 

With Autar Nehru (Delhi); Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai); Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) & Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)