Impact of Reservation in Education – Merits and Demerits

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Dr. CT. Sunilkumar
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Introduction
The greatest of all revolution the French revolution of 1789 was based on three pillars, Equality, Fraternity and Liberty. In India too the freedom fight led by M.K.Gandhi projected equality as one of the major themes for Indian freedom fighting. But after 60 years of Indian Independence how far equality is being practiced in society is a matter of major concern. Reservation as a practice existed in the society for more than 2000 years and transformed to the new contrary stature in the post independence period due to the tenacious efforts of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, MK Gandhi and other great leaders. The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, defines the nation as a ‘Democratic Republic’ which ensures that All citizens are equal before law, free from discrimination on grounds of caste, creed, religion, sex, place of birth, and equality of opportunity in education and public appointments. The Constitution also specifically abolishes untouchability. The Constitution lay down ‘special provisions’ for the reservation of seats in educational institutions, government service, PSU service, Parliament and state legislature for Scheduled castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). The same section also defines ‘backward classes’ but neither gives a satisfactory definition of them nor lays any specific provisions on their behalf.

The explicit purpose of the reservation policy was and is to promote social, economic, and political equality for Dalits, tribal peoples, and other lower castes peoples, (i.e. OBCs (Other Backward Communities) through positive or compensatory discrimination. By this policy, the leaders of independent India declared their determination to eradicate inequalities. The constitutional delegitimation of caste has had a significant impact at all levels of society. Nevertheless, the policy has also contributed to the progressive strengthening of caste as a major political factor, so that sixty years after independence it still plays a key role in the working of Indian democracy.

Caste Reservation
The role of caste in politics was at its peek in 1990, when Shri. V.P. Singh, the then prime minister announced that the National Front government would implement the recommendations of Mandal Commission report which was issued 10 years earlier, beginning with the reservation of 27 % of jobs in central government services and public undertakings for the OBCs. This new quota was in addition to the existing 22.5 percentage already reserved for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and the total reserved quota amounted to just under 50 percent.

The 104th Constitution Amendment Bill, providing reservations was passed in the parliament; the bill provides reservation for the socially and educationally backward classes, besides the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in all private aided and unaided educational institutions. Out of the 381 members present in the Parliament, 379 voted in favour of the bill. The amendment is the government's attempt to offset the effect of the Supreme Court judgment that categorically said that “in an unaided (which runs without government funding) educational institution; whether run by non-minorities or minorities, the government cannot implement its policy of reservation.”

All the minority private management started to use the Article 30 of the Indian Constitution that acted as a shield which gives the right to minorities to establish and administer educational institutions, in practice. These institutions have become highly commercialized where poor or backward students can't even dream of getting education. The decision of Bill 104 was having an adverse effect on the upper caste Hindus but the opposition party BJP never opinioned against it because they never wanted major vote bank going towards the Congress. The BJP tried to capitalise on both these classes’ sentiments by unsuccessfully moving an amendment to the Bill to get Muslim and Christian education institutions under the purview of the Bill. But the BJP move got only 110 votes out of the 382 members who voted.

Impact of Reservation
From another perspective, the fact that literacy rates among the disadvantaged castes (particularly the ‘Scheduled Caste’) are much lower than average is well-known. What is less clear is why this contrast happens to be so sharp and resilient, even when different castes share the same schooling facilities. Economic deprivations among the disadvantaged castes helps to explain this pattern, but there is much evidence of a strong caste basis in literacy rates even at a given level of income. This basis has several possible roots. First, the traditional upper caste view that education is not appropriate for the ‘lower’ castes continues to have some social influence. This view is bound to reduce the educational aspirations of children from the disadvantaged castes, and the parental and social support they receive in pursuit of these aspirations. Second, there may be objectives difference in economic and other returns to education for different castes. For e.g. an upper caste boy with good social connections often has a better chance of finding a well-paid job than a low-caste boy with more or similar educational qualifications. Third, children from disadvantaged castes are still discriminated against the schooling system. Example: teachers refusing to touch low-caste children, children from particular castes being special targets of verbal abuse and physical punishment by the teachers, and low-caste children being frequently beaten by higher-caste classmates. Fourth, in higher / top undergraduate and graduate institutions in India, such as the IIT, the IIM, that are among the most selective in the world, it is not surprising that most reservation criteria are applied at the stage of entrance examinations for these institutions. Some of the criteria are relaxed for reserved categories, while others are completely eliminated. Examples include: The minimum high school marks criteria are relaxed for reserved seats. For example, in IIT JEE, reserved category candidates scoring about 65% of the last admitted general category candidate are directly offered admission. Candidates not meeting this cutoff but scoring as low as half of this are offered admission to a one year preparatory course. In AIIMS, for example SC/ST students are eligible only if they score 50%. But this 50% is not mandatory for the institute quota, and on an occasion, the Honourable High Court of Delhi had found that "AIIMS students, who had secured as low as 14% or 19% or 22% in the (all-India) entrance examination got admission to PG courses.”

It is important to note, however, that the criteria required to graduate from an institution are never relaxed; the thus admitted students finding it difficult to get pass marks to come out of the programs successfully. Generally, the percentage of students passing from the top institutions is 87% to 95 % (approx) and most of those who fail are from the reserved categories. When there are students in the same class of different intellectual levels (the student scoring 1st rank and the student scoring the lowest rank), it will be difficult for the professors to go ahead in the same pace and rhythm in the class. The drop outs will be those from the backward and weakers sections.

Merits
After the Bill 104, opinions are clearly divided between those who feel that the reservations are nothing but a political gimmick and should be opposed at all cost, and those who say the move will genuinely help lift the status of backward classes. If it is true, why the state of Kerala was able to provide this nation with a President and a Supreme Court Chief Justice from the Scheduled Caste community? Why in the literacy situation in India, Kerala is distinct from others? Kerala is the place where the first Dalit School came up at Venganoor in Trivandrum district of Kerala. In 1904, Shri. Ayyankali started the school entry struggle which resulted in this. Other major development in terms of the social status was due to the Temple entry proclamation done by the His Highness Shri Chitira Thirunal Balarama Varma in 1936. He abolished the ban on low caste people or ‘avarnas’ from entering Hindu temple in the state of Travancore (now a part of Kerala).

Demerits
Demerits are that the politicians are manufacturing fertile ground to sow, nurture and harvest the evils of separatism, keep people divided on religious grounds. The Human Resource Development Minister, who moved the Bill 104, could not hide his glee when he replied to the BJP on why minority institutions cannot be included. “Minority rights, as specified in Article 30, should, in all circumstances, be protected. This Article has a great historical necessity. Therefore, it cannot be deleted,” he said.

All over India, minorities do run a few exceptionally dedicated institutions, helping the poor and bringing social justice, but most of them are profit-making machines. The cries to include minority institutions are raised loudly because the private institutions are better managed than the government-owned institutions. But when we look at the minority institution statistics, the institutions owned by the SC/ST management are negligibly small and those by the minority communities linguistically are more. Then who is having the major chunk? Are these minority institutions really protecting the rights of minorities? Are they upholding the noble cause of reservation?

Conclusion
Reservations are intended to increase the social diversity in campuses by lowering the entry criteria for certain identifiable groups that are grossly under-represented in proportion to their numbers in the general population. Caste is the most used criteria to identify under-represented groups. However, there are other identifiable criteria for under-representation: gender (women), state of domicile (North Eastern States, as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh), rural people, etc. are under-represented, as revealed by the Government of India sponsored National Family Health and National Sample surveys.

The underlying theory is that the under-representation of the identifiable groups is a legacy of the Indian caste systems. After India gained independence, the Constitution of India listed some erstwhile groups as Scheduled Castes (SC) and Schdeuled Tribes (ST). The framers of the Constitution believed that, due to the caste system, SCs and the STs were historically oppressed and denied respect and equal opportunity in Indian society and were thus under-represented in nation-building activities. The Constitution laid down 15% and 7.5% of vacancies to government aided educational institutes and for jobs in the government/public sector as ‘reserved quota’ for the SC and ST candidates respectively, for a period of five years, after which the situation was to be reviewed. This period was routinely extended by the following governments and the Indian Parliament, and no revisions were undertaken for the fear of losing votes (It is a well known fact that the so-called backward communities are active in politics and their people vote; unfortunately, the majority of highly educated Indians do not vote during the general elections.). Most of the time, the achievement made by the reservation system is being ignored. When the nation progresses, we cannot neglect any sections. How can we go ahead when 1/3 of the population is below poverty line?

References

1. Fuller, Christopher J. “Caste”. In The Oxford Indian Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology (p 477-p 499) Oxford University Press
2. Dreze, Jean. “Patterns of Literacy and their Social Context Caste”. The Oxford Indian companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology. Oxford University Press (p 974-p 989)
3. Shah, Ghanshyam. Social movements in India – A Review of LiteratureMandelbaum,
4. David G. Society in India. (Vol.I) Bombay:Popular Prakashan.