[Reader-list] Praful Bidwai Defends Reservations in Dhaka Paper

[NAEEM MOHAIEMEN]

http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/05/29/d60529020531.htm

DAILY STAR (Bangladesh)
Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 711 	Mon. May 29, 2006 	 
  	  	
Editorial


Anti-quota stir is misguided: In defence of
affirmative action
Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi

As students from India's privileged educational
institutions continue their protests against
reservations for the lower castes (OBCs), it becomes
clear that the agitation is an organised affair.

Three groups have played a critical role in it: upper
caste-dominated guilds like the Indian Medical
Association; industrialists and owners of private
colleges, who oppose any extension of reservations
even for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes; and
Bharatiya Janata Party politicians.

Among those who joined the agitation were Information
Technology executives, and "event management"
specialists, who charge hefty fees. Industrial tycoons
tried to kill AA in collegesso it can't be extended to
private business.

A year's delay in quota implementation means that
capitation-fee colleges and private institutions, with
an intake of over 534,000 students, make landfall
profits of Rs 1,000-2,500 crores by selling seats
meant for OBCs.

Regrettably, even the National Knowledge Commission
played a partisan role in the whole business. First,
it publicly opposed OBC reservation. Then, two of its
members quit, adding grist to the anti-AA mill.

The agitation's rationale had nothing to do with the
public interest. Rather, it was a highly
individualistic urge to defend privilege. The bulk of
the agitators are children of the new middle class
which has burgeoned under post-1991skewed,
inequality-enhancing, economic policies.

Many of them don't see their own unprecedented
prosperity and rising incomes as the result of larger
economic processes, such as higher rates of savings,
macroeconomic policies, or globalisation, which has
generated new divisions of labour, creating
opportunities, for instance, in IT and related
services.

Even less are they aware that their own prosperity is
the obverse of the squalor of the majority and the
further squeezing of India's most backward regions.
Rather, they attribute it to their own "merit" and
initiative, thus perpetuating the status quo.

The agitation targeted the fundamental principle of AA
itself. Had it succeeded, India would have lost the
hard-earned gains of the social reform movement and
turned its back on the imperative of correcting the
distortions and inequalities caused by unbalanced
growth.

The agitation's supporters take refuge behind many
specious (or half-valid) arguments: that AA will kill
"merit"; that OBCs are already fairly well-represented
in many professions, according to a 1999 National
Sample Survey Organisation estimate; and the benefits
of quotas will inevitably be cornered by the OBCs'
affluent, influential "creamy layer".

The "merit" argument is bogus in a society based on
inheritance of property, and privilege related to
birth. This means that the affluent are at a vastly
different starting-point from the disadvantaged. Merit
makes sense only when it measures the distance between
the starting-point and the end-point. Most upper-caste
people enjoy unfair advantage because of their higher
starting-point.

Merit is only one, small, component of achievement. It
isn't easy to measure, quantify or compare. In public
recruitment or admissions, other criteria are equally
relevant: for instance, gender, ethnic, and regional
balance, and diversity.

The fundamental point is that a person born in an
educated upper-crust family will have a totally
different universe of knowledge and social contactsand
wholly different access to information about the
availability of colleges and courses, career options,
professional advice, etc. S/he can always call "Uncle"
so-and-so in the civil service or the medical
profession to get tips.

Typically, such advantage outweighs differences of
wealth. Past discrimination continues to produce
inequality of opportunity even when there is no
discrimination at present. The critical issue is how
to level the playing field so as to give genuinely
equal opportunity to the disadvantaged.

Affirmative action offers the best solution. It can
take many forms, including voluntary targets for
recruitment of disadvantaged groups, special
counselling, diversity promotion programmes, etc.
Reservations, admittedly, are a rather blunt
instrument. It can be validly argued that India has
used reservations as the sole form of AA. But we
should not make the best an enemy of the good.

As for the argument that OBCs have nearly the same
representation as their population share in numerous
professions, the evidence from NSSO is dubious. NSSO
is simply not equipped to identify local caste groups.
That's is the job of specialised anthropologists,
sociologists and historians familiar with caste
configurations which vary from district to district.

The "creamy layer" argument is certainly valid. Social
and educational backwardness is a changing phenomenon.
There is upward mobility among the OBCs. But their
upper layers need not automatically corner quotas.
They should be excluded from doing so along the
criteria specified by the Supreme Court in the Mandal
judgment.

After all, at maximum, only half of India's OBCs (52
percent of total population) can get accommodated
under the 27 percent quota. This must be the lower
half.

It would be ideal in the long term if different
institutions could devise varying AA formulas based
upon different criteria besides casteincluding gender,
economic status of family, quality of parents'
schooling, backwardness of region of origin, etc.
Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University has a decade-old
admissions policy which gives extra points to OBCs,
women and regional backwardness over and above a
candidate's entrance examination score. This has
significantly raised JNU's OBC intake.

Some social scientists have proposed AA formulas
assigning different weights to these factors. Despite
their drawbackse.g. wantonly opening up the settled
SC/SC quota issue, or providing at best a marginal
boost to OBCsthese proposals should be seriously
debated.

However, the topmost priority last fortnight was to
beat back the challenge posed by the anti-quota
agitation, which opposed the very principle of
affirmative action.

The UPA government did well to uphold the principle.
Wisely, it didn't resort to the undesirable device of
phased implementation. But it will have to increase
the total number of seats in Central educational
institutions by 54 percent within a year, at estimated
expense of Rs 8,000 crores.

This is a formidable, but worthwhile, task. One can
only hope that the upper castes accept reservations in
the spirit of a caring-and-sharing society.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
	 
 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com