The New Indian Express

July 8, 2006

The Judiciary’s intervention on educational quotas may culminate in judgments parallel to those in Indra Sawhney vs. Others. As this process may be a long haul, to place matters in perspective understanding the following seven issues may be necessary.

One, the Centre’s decision was in the context of Article 15(5), but the validity of this Article has been challenged. Two, as the decision has more to do with Article 15(4), the basis on which it was taken and the modalities for its implementation, need explanation. As of now there is no Central list of OBCs for educational reservation. The list prepared was for job reservation under Article 16(4) but the educational reservation contemplated is under Article 15(4). The accent of Article 16(4) is on social backwardness; that of Article 15(4) is on social and educational backwardness.

Three, Article 15(4) empowering the State to make special provisions for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes or the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been in force for 55 years. Assuming that reference to special provisions is to different instruments of affirmative action, their use for 55 years and the rationale for sudden introduction of reservation now may come under judicial scanner.

Four, unlike job reservation which was explicitly mandated by the Constitution, educational reservation has been by interpretation of Article 15(4). This interpretation is likely to be re-examined by the judiciary.

Five, the Tamil Nadu experiment has been in the context of a single state, mainly through common entrance tests for professional courses with separate cut-off marks for SCs, STs, MBCs, OBCs, and Open Category, conducted by one university. Since central institutions are of different types, which have to address the educational needs of students of different streams from different parts of the country, whether the Tamil Nadu experiment can at all be replicated in central institutions needs debate.

Six, the implementation of educational (and employment) reservation from 1951 (from 1927 to 1950 through the communal GO) has not made Tamil Nadu a land of milk and honey as made out by politicians. If anything, other states and the Centre have a lot to learn from its quota conundrum. The 1970 report of the Tamil Nadu First Backward Classes Commission observed that nine castes, accounting for 11 percent of the BC population, had cornered 37 percent of the non-gazetted and 48 percent of the gazetted posts, 44 percent of the engineering and 47 percent of the medical seats; and that if the upper crust in each caste is not removed from competing with the less privileged, the object of social justice, especially distributive justice, will not be achieved.

The state did not find these observations politically expedient. The later increase in reservation for OBCs by the MGR-led AIADMK ministry, from 31 to 50 percent, had no legal or sociological basis.

The data available for 1981-82 in the report of the Tamil Nadu Second Backward Classes Commission reveal the following: Of the BC students admitted to professional courses, more than three-fourths were from 34 of the 222 BCs, accounting for only two-fifths of the BC population; of the total number of BC scholarships, the total amount of these scholarships, and candidates of all grades selected by the Public Service Commission, two-thirds again went to this small number; even within this small number, just about one-third, accounting for one-third of the total BC population, had cornered two-thirds of the BC admissions to the professional courses and more than half of the scholarships, scholarship amounts, and BC candidates selected by the Public Service Commission. The state did not do anything to correct such usurpation.

If reservation is to bring about group-level equality, for at least the last three decades Tamil Nadu has been having a strong case for excluding several groups from the OBC list.

The state has not done this. If such exclusion may be unfair to the backwards within each group, the state should have eliminated the creamy layers within each. It has not done this either.

Data on Government employees for 1999 reveal that the representation of SCs (eligible for 18 percent reservation) was only 13 percent and 18 percent in groups A+B and C+D respectively; of STs (eligible for 1 percent reservation) only 0.4 percent and 1 percent; and of MBCs and Denotified Tribes (eligible for 20 percent reservation) 16 percent and 15 percent. The corresponding figures for BCs (upper layer of OBCs) were 55 and 46 in groups A+B and C+D respectively - well above the 30 percent quota for them.

As over-representation of the BCs indicates that they have already crossed the Rubicon, and as they have been neck and neck with the open category in marks obtained for admission to professional courses, the state can peg the BC quota at a realistic level, say, 20 percent, to provide more scope for open competition; and exclude creamy layers even from this reduced quota, so that only the really backward will depend on the state.

In the 7+ population 37 percent of the SCs and 59 percent of the STs are illiterate. The figure is only 24 percent for the rest of the population. In the 15+ population only 2.2 percent of the SCs and 1 percent of the STs are graduates. The percentage is 5.4 for the rest of the population. If the SCs and STs are so backward in employment and education, whatever has happened to the implementation of the constitutional provisions for their social and educational advancement during the past 55 years, and in what sense Tamil Nadu is a model to the rest of the country?

Seven, if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has to honour his assurance to the students of a fair, just, inclusive, and robust education system, addressing the needs of the heterogeneous ensemble that makes up the student community in the melting-pot of the education system from primary to tertiary levels by fostering existing institutions and creating new ones commensurate with the perceived and projected demand for education should be a national imperative.

Politicising the education system as a vote-bank and offering sops to a few will be worse than even concession, the nemesis of which (concession) as R.H. Tawney said in his classic work Equality, is death by dilution.

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