http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/OPINION/Editorial/Greater_good/articleshow/1055301.cms
Greater good One of the hotly debated issues of last year was the advisability of quotas for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in educational institutions. At end-2006, Parliament went ahead and passed legislation on reservations for OBCs in central educational institutions despite misgivings that blanket quotas would not benefit the intended targets. However, the most efficient way of targeting the needy remains a live issue. In this context, the National Knowledge Commission's proposal for a deprivation index to assess backwardness of students is welcome. The index would look at several factors in assessing a student's needs, including caste, religion, gender and place of residence. This is in some ways the flip side of Jeremy Bentham's celebrated felicific calculus which was a measure of the sum total of pleasure and pain produced by an act and the total value of its consequences. While Bentham was looking at the minimum penalty needed to prevent crime of a certain kind, the deprivation index is meant to ensure that affirmative action is effective. The index is, of course, not entirely a novel suggestion. Sociologists have come up with formulas to replace quotas based on caste. One such alternative envisaged points being awarded for disadvantages based on caste, community, gender, type of schooling and family background. The deprivation index takes off from such suggestions. But that it is being proposed by a government-appointed body gives it much more credibility. The big plus of the deprivation index is that it brings in criteria in addition to caste to calculate the needs of a student. Assigning reservations based exclusively on caste has little to recommend it. This is particularly true for the OBC category which is deeply contested. There is good evidence to suggest that certain groups within the OBCs have cornered most of the benefits of reservation. These groups have become dominant in both political and economic terms. At the same time, other groups have fallen behind and now constitute a category called the Most Backward Classes. A deprivation index where caste is only one among several factors has the advantage of bypassing the need to classify which castes really merit quotas. It also has the benefit of including the needy from other religious communities. If applied wisely, the deprivation index can, as Bentham put it, produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
