http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Social_uplift_or_cynical_arithmetic/articleshow/2063216.cms
Social uplift or cynical arithmetic? BODHISATVA GANGULI TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, MAY 21, 2007 12:05:39 AM] The Supreme Court's decision to refer the issue of reservation for other backward classes (OBC) in central educational institutions to a larger bench, has most likely resulted in OBC reservations being put off by a year. A positive by-product has been an educated debate on reservation, not least in these columns. While it is perilous to predict the outcome of judicial proceedings, the balance of probability is that the government's power to enforce reservation in its own institutions will be upheld by the apex court. There is a formidable body of legal precedents that points towards this outcome, though whether the government should do this is another matter. (There is the separate but related issue of whether the government can enforce reservations in private educational institutions, which do not receive any assistance from it. In that case, the SC would do well to reiterate its earlier judgement, now overturned by Parliament that it cannot.) Whatever the outcome, the SC's intervention has thrown up a number of issues. The political class has argued that since the Bill providing reservations in higher education was unanimously passed by Parliament, it should be subject to greater judicial deference. However, whether a piece of legislation is passed by one vote or unanimously does not preclude a challenge to its constitutionality. Analogous to the missing market agreement in economics, on certain issues there is no 'market' for political debate. Simply put, while many MPs may privately doubt the wisdom of reservation in higher education for OBCs (reservation for SC/ST is widely accepted) or may believe that the percentage of reserved seats, 50% (SC/ST plus OBC) is too high, they are unlikely to say this in public. This is because what is now called the 'general' category constitutes a minority in numerical terms. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, 69% of seats are reserved for 88% of the population. The remaining 12% of the population, which may be opposed to reservation, effectively have no political representation. Their situation is not very different from Gujarat's 9% Muslim population, whose views do not matter to the Narendra Modi government. The point is not to draw facile comparisons between Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, but to point out that unanimity may always not indicate wisdom. The Maharashtra assembly, for instance, will doubtless unanimously agree to ban James Laine's 'controversial' book and such coercive action would be supported by parties across the political spectrum. It was left to the Supreme Court to rightly ignore 'people's will' and quash the FIR registered against the author and for the Bombay HC to lift the ban, though the parties representing 'people's will' will doubtless ensure that the book is not sold. At least, not in Mumbai. The historic roots of reservation in India are different from affirmative action in the case of the United States or South Africa. These are intended to offset the effect of legal regimes that discriminated against the minority or in the case of South Africa the majority community. The situation of Dalits in India is similar, if not legally, certainly in terms of actual social reality. But the case that similar discrimination was practised against OBCs in India is rather more tenuous. Certainly, they were not denied political power. Numbers have ensured that members of the OBC communities control political power. In India, reservations, which began in the Madras Presidency a century ago, are seen by its more scholarly proponents as a stable arrangement, distributing civil service jobs and political power among communities, rather than temporary measures in response to past discrimination. Some of the more simplistic anti-reservation arguments, advanced by the likes of 'Youth for Equality' are clearly oblivious to the historical context. Anti-reservationists have also hurt their cause with offensive arguments claiming that reservation would produce "intellectual pygmies." as they did in an affidavit before the SC. Much more relevant is one of the questions posed by the SC's division bench, as to whether reservations can continue indefinitely and whether the government has unfettered power to reserve any percentage of seats. The question to be answered is whether this amounts to a violation of the fundamental right to equality for those denied the benefits of quotas. Not even the most sophisticated pro-reservation argument is willing to clarify whether reservations will eventually end, particularly in states where they have been in place for many decades, or are they part of a stable permanent arrangement. Clearly, some indeed see it as a semi-permanent arrangement as revealed by remarks that OBCs have 'waited' 56 years for their due. But there has been no legal bar on OBCs competing on merit. Indeed, one striking aspect of the debate is the lack of data on how many members of the OBC communities have made it on merit to IITs and IIMs in the past. It has been argued that the gap between the reserved and unreserved categories has been narrowing, both for the UPSC exams and IIMs. Hearteningly, the topper in this year's IAS examination is from an OBC community. This is meant to counter the argument that merit will suffer because, in the case of the IIMs and IITs, all students are from the upper echelons of the merit list. The narrowing of the gap is commendable, but in the case of IIMs, the top one select students from the top 0.5% of students. The difference of a few percentile points means a difference of hundreds of ranks. To buttress the 'reservation-won't-reduce-merit' theory it is also often said that a large chunk of the merit seats are going to students entitled to reservation in some southern states. But that is an argument to reduce the extent of reservation, if one believes that selection on merit is an ideal situation, though temporary deviations — even for long periods — may be permitted to take care of historic disadvantage. Even the most scholarly pro-reservation arguments seem to operate in an India-centric bubble, apparently oblivious to global developments. Vellore Medical College is often held up as an example of an excellent educational institution. But IIMs and IITs have seen too 'little' reservation and have been benchmarked against the best in the world. To consider another example, Malaysia, which has quotas in jobs and education, is a relatively rich country with high social indices. But strictly meritocratic Singapore has done even better. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
