Some respite

Since the debate on affirmative action began, this newspaper has carried several reports and analyses on this issue and all of them broadly made the same point: the problem lay in schooling, and not at the college level, or at the level of jobs. So, if other backward castes (OBCs) got only 24 per cent of the top jobs compared to their population share of 32 per cent, this was not discrimination but a fallout of the fact that their share in those enrolled in colleges was also around 24 per cent, and that this could not be increased through reservations since their share in those who passed out from schools was also around the same. A similar set of numbers can be seen in the case of scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) communities as well. So, to the extent that reservations are ineffective, anything that delays them can be considered a good thing. And that is precisely what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has achieved when he got the Cabinet to postpone a decision on the Bill to mandate reservation in educational institutions not funded by the government. As far as government-aided institutions are concerned, the Prime Minister, in spite of great pressure from critical allies like the DMK, has by and large stood by the Moily committee's recommendations. So, the reservations will be staggered over a period of three years (the Moily committee was in favour of five years), during which period the government will have to shell out Rs 16,500 crore to increase capacity in educational institutions. While the money needed to increase capacity will be huge, especially when compared with the amount spent by the government today, the critical issue will be the manner in which this is implemented. Increasing teaching capacity will require a huge infusion of teachers, already in short supply by as high as 60-80 per cent in the case of engineering institutions, for instance. Similarly, while the Moily committee is in favour of the respective institutions determining the cut-off for admission "so that the level of (their) excellence is not compromised at all", it is certain there will be pressure to lower these standards.

It is unfortunate that the government appears to have already decided not to exclude the creamy layer of OBCs from the proposed reservation, even though the Moily committee had promised to take up this controversial issue in its final report. This is unfortunate since there is enough evidence to show that more than anything else, it is the economic criterion that has a correlation with the level of educational backwardness. If you take the lowest income quintile, the National Sample Survey (NSS) data show that the upper-caste Hindu has 87 per cent more education years than an SC and 47 per cent more than an OBC. Yet, the upper-most quintile's SC has 2.5 times the education years of an SC in the lower-most quintile while for OBCs the multiple is 2.2. Similar differences show up between rural and urban areas, for not just SCs and OBCs, but for upper-caste Hindus as well. Clearly, this would not be the case if caste, and not income, was the major differentiator.