Making Sense of Reservations

Almost 50 years ago, the famous mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell came up with this ingenious and oft-repeated quote, “Statistics is very much like a bra. What it reveals is good, but what it hides is a lot more vital”

A lot has been said and written about reservations in the media as well as the blogosphere. Having read a lot of that, I thought of a different approach to the issue, an Engineer’s approach.

Let’s start with the numbers and see how they stack up to reach some interesting conclusions

• To start with, the National Backward Classes Commission designated 4,820 communities in the country as backward, (yes, it really is a shockingly large number) and they estimated these communities to form 40-44% of the national population. Initially, members of all the 4,820 communities were considered backward and then of course, came the SC ruling on the “creamy layer”, which I will not detail here, but will discuss later.
• The 4,820 communities included some very powerful castes which yield a lot of political clout. Some notable entries there are the Chettiars, Devars in Tamil Nadu, Patels in Gujarat, Jats in Bihar, but not the Jats in Rajasthan (!) and Vokkaligas & Shettys in Karnataka, to name a few.
• The IITs set aside Rs. 15 Lakh a year per student for infrastructure.
• The IITs normally admit 5000 students a year, but will have to admit 6000 this year, which by simple math, means an increased spending of Rs. 150 crores just this year.
• The Central Government has already issued Rs. 1100 crores to the IITs and IIMs last year for the implementation of quotas and will be releasing another 1771 crore over the next three years.
• Let’s move to the Delhi University now. One of the biggest in the country, its problems with staff shortage and woeful infrastructure for a capacity of 1200 students is already well publicized. Now, they will have to admit 1800 students with no hope of improving the infrastructure.
• Now, the creamy layer: Two definitions that I found more interesting than the rest: The income cap of 2.5 Lakh & if the parent is a farmer holding land of area greater than 85% of statuatory ceiling issued by the state.
• There will be a marks limit for the OBC students too. One of the SC judges suggested a 10-mark difference.

Enough stats there. Let’s move on to dissecting every one of those little nuggets to uncover what lies beneath.

4,820 communities form say 42% of the national population and we are told that they cant make it to institutions without a quota in place to help them and this will promote social equality and justice. Now that can mean one of either two things: The people from these 4,280 communities are really dumb, or of course the people from the remaining 58% of the population are extremely smart. Coming from the latter category, I guess you can clearly understand what I am alluding to!

One look at the Categories list will tell you that the list should have been renamed from OBC to ANC, which quite simply stands for All Non-Brahman Classes. Believe me, that is no exaggeration. Along with the Brahman classes, the only exemptions from that list are a few powerful classes who do not hold any place in the politics of the country, since they are busy making a living for themselves on the merits of their own sweat and hard work.

The good thing about money is, it normally speaks for itself. That’s the beauty of the next few numbers there. Now, isn’t such a lot of investment in a few colleges in the country a very skewed manner of ensuring social “equality”? Wouldn’t it make more sense to build schools in rural areas and ensure that people get their primary education right?

Ah! Now we uncover the crux of it all – the creamy layer. This definition was obviously excluded from the HRD Ministry’s proposal, but trust Arjun Singh and Co. to find ways of skirting around this little technicality and making it just another piece of legal jargon. For instance, there is already a move to increase the cap to 4 lakhs. Now, we have all been through the process of admissions and examinations. If a parent earns, say 3.98 lakhs a year, how difficult is it for him to enroll his son in a private tuition? Can’t his son then write the exam on his own merit?

I come from an area in Bangalore which was recently included in the clutches of the BBMP. Till then, many people here owned fake land documents and shirked paying taxes for well, God Alone knows, how many millennia!!!? Once again, this is Bangalore. A big, booming city and an epicenter of development in the country. And people do own fake land documents here. So, how difficult is it to do the same elsewhere? That apart, 85% as it is, is a pretty huge ceiling. And even if people are above that limit, this is India my friend. A wad of the cash under the table equals a piece of paper above it!

I would like to conclude this whole piece with an interesting experiment conducted in Bihar in 2004. The experiment conducted by two Dutch women in a small school in a Bihar village required children to complete mazes and do logic puzzles after which they were rewarded for their efforts. The exercise was done in two stages. The difference between the two stages, was one simple announcement.

Before the second stage commenced, the students were differentiated on the basis of their caste and then asked to perform the same exercises. Now, tell me, what do you think the result would have been?

Before the announcement, all students were seen to be equally competitive. After that, Surprise! Surprise! The students who were designated as the backward classes actually performed much worse!

If not anything else, the experiment tells us one thing. When people are typecast, unconsciously and unintentionally, their actions and mindset too fall into the same stereotypes. Now, if a student is admitted on the basis of being from a “backward” caste and not on merit, the inferiority complex will probably kill him when he faces the competition from the “forward” classes!

Let’s paint a different picture. What if the same money is channeled at the primary education level and these students make it to the same colleges on merit and not on the basis of just being backward? Well, one may argue that the students may not study at the primary level. Believe me, if one cannot study at the primary level, there is just no way he can succeed in a competitive atmosphere like the IITs!

So, then, in this case as in so many other cases, this is what the entire issue boils down to: A matter of perspective! What matters is not about who is looking at the issue in the right way, but whether the right people have the right take on the issue. In this case, that is a question I’d rather not answer!