[Reader-list] RESERVATION APPEASEMENT

[mahmood farooqui]

Following today's Indian Express, I would like to add my two penny bit
in the general trading of ignorance...

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Those opposing reservations in IITs and higher education institutes do
not easily fit the bill of privileged, exploitative classes. Many of
them come from homes with modest incomes; have spent precious family
resources in coaching or other forms of training, and embody,
sometimes, generations of struggles to reach the institutes of higher
learning. In a scenario where the annual budget of IIT coaching
institutes far surpasses the budget of IITs itself, investing in a
coaching institute for a professional course is not an easy choice for
a middling income urban family.

Yet, the increasing lucrativeness of a place at the IITs or IIMs hides
a longer term trend-the retreat of the state from higher education.
The state now spends less than half percent of the National income on
higher education and privately run professional institutes outnumber
the government ones by at least three to one. Merely reserving seats
in select institutes will not make a dent in the broader inequality of
access to higher education.

However, arguments opposing reservation in the name of merit and
openness overlook the fact that the restricted seats are in proportion
to the population. Keeping 27% seats for roughly 27% of the
population, there seems no injustice in it prima facie. Like everyone
else they too will have to compete, at least among themselves, will
have to pass exams and perform at their jobs if they are to succeed.

The backward caste, however, is a segment with more internal
differentiation than perhaps any other in our caste conglomeration.
Jats, Yadavs, Kurmis, Lodhs, the prominent upper backwards form the
backbone of the ruling parties in most states of Northern India. They
are also the greatest beneficiaries of Zamindari abolition and of the
green revolution and are among the most prosperous agricultural
castes. In many places they have replaced the erstwhile upper castes
as the dominant section in our rural landscape. There is already a
de-facto political reservation, if you are not a backward you would
find it very difficult to achieve political success in these states.

The question then is that if the backward castes already control the
levers of power, already have reservation in government jobs, why are
they demanding reservations in higher education? The answer is a
paradox. They have not, in this instance, made any demands, the
decision was taken more or less unilaterally, perhaps by Arjun Singh
alone. Yet, reservations are an important political strategy, because
there is a continuous, persistent demand for reservations in all kinds
of places, by all sorts of people.

While they dominate the political parties, the backward classes are
not yet the ruling class of this country. The ruling classes which
consist of the professional elite, the media, the bureaucracy, banks
and academia are still dominated, to an astoundingly disproportionate
degree, by the upper castes. One would be hard put to find backward
caste representation in the IIT faculty, for instance, or among
editors of Hindi newspapers. The demand for reservations in the cream
of our professional institutes is a demand, then, for a share of
social and economic prestige, an attempt by a politically dominant
class to convert its political power into social capital. Someone
belonging to the Yadav caste today does have the economic and social
resources to compete in the open exam, but the educational
backwardness that she starts with will ensure that it would take many
generations for the caste to find proportionate representation in the
IITs and the IIMs.

On the other hand the backward castes are not synonymous with backward
classes and there is some merit in the argument, as put forward among
others by Dalit ideologue Chandrabhan Prasad, that reservation for
backward castes detracts from the agenda of providing succor to the
Dalits and Adivasis, those without any capital or power.

Whether for Dalits or OBCs, reservation in itself is more an eyewash
than an effective intervention in redressing the disparities of power
and of social and economic wealth. Real affirmative action would
combine reservation for jobs with equal access for education. But are
those who suggest real affirmative action willing to allow OBC and
Dalit reservation in our public schools? Can we have affirmative
action at the school level without a universal and uniform system of
primary and secondary education? Is this realistic in a country where
the state has not yet been able to ensure universal literacy?

We live in a society with scarce resources and a large number of
claimants. Should the disadvantaged be asked to wait for a time when
we have enough resources for everyone or should we ensure a more
equitable share for everyone out of whatever meager riches we have
right now? Can reservation appeasement be de-linked from other actions
of a polity which has only ever been capable of providing merely
symbolic palliatives?

Once we accept that we live in a polity which delivers in symbols and
gestures, which is not about to change overnight, we have to accept
the potency of symbolic actions. Identity politics may not be a
substitute for material progress but in the absence of material
improvement symbolic gestures are welcome. Besides who goes into the
IITs is not as important as the fact that there are only a handful of
IITs and IIMs in a country with several crore graduates. I would be
delighted if students begin to protest against the anomaly of a system
which produces crores of unemployed graduates and where some 40% of
the population still remains illiterate. As for whether protests in
this country can be anything other than symbolic, I will save that
issue for another day.