Mamta Singh: A potential perspective

PERSPECTIVES

Finally, some evidence on why the government's policy of reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes may not be such a good idea.

The latest World Development Report cites a study conducted by Hoff and Pandey which shows that children from "low-castes" performed significantly worse in certain specified tasks when their caste was publicly announced.

Students from the, "low-caste" performed a little better than "high caste" children when the castes were not announced, but their performance dipped sharply when the castes were announced before the tasks were assigned to them.

In another context, this is also now becoming apparent in the problems of assimilating students from economically backward families in public schools. Compulsory seat reservation is not the answer. There are no substitutes for providing better education to all.