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The idea of caste based reservation system was envisioned by William Hunter and Jyotirao Phule
in various forms in 1882 and implemented by Chatrapati Sahuji in 1901. The term was changed
to "Depressed Class" in 1932 by Ambedkar and later to "Scheduled Caste/Tribes" during the
framing of the constitution in 1950. The idea was that a vast majority of the poor were from a
very small caste group and they needed a social net so that they can be accommodated into
society as full fledged members. It is important to note that this part of the reservation was for
electoral rights first (to guarantee political representation - Poona Act 35) and a education/job
rights issue second. Also note that education was made free in these early attempts so that
poverty does not hinder their education by these early efforts. If not for Dr.Ambedkar's efforts,
even this would not have come through during Independence. Ambedkar remains an icon for
minority causes even today and is revered because of this. Enough of history. Fast forward to
today.
Objectives of Reservation:
Ensure that minorities are not discriminated in job selections and promotion
The
caste
based
reservation
system
is
built
around
these
three
objectives.
Equality of opportunity : If a member of lower strata applies to a job and has the right
qualifications and is a better performer compared to peers, he should get the job. Ie, their
caste/economic status should not decide which jobs they apply/get selected to.
barriers to pursuing this goal. Ie, they should not be at a disadvantage when choosing their
course of life because they were born poor/belong to a particular caste.
Social safety net : When certain members of society did not have these privileges earlier
and the government wants to help them, certain non contributory (free) measures are taken to
help them. Ie, members of a disadvantaged group are given free financial incentives so that
they are not trapped in the present position/do not fall into a life of crime and poverty. In
short, a mid life boost to success.
Since the disadvantaged groups of India have been discriminated against forcenturies, and are
still not protected despite the numerous laws(40% of crimes are committed against this 22% of
the population), before equality of opportunity and autonomy, a social safety net is needed - ie a
boost or ladder is required so that the more advanced forms of equality can be introduced and
society can be balanced.
Contrary to popular opinion, a social safety net is the most effective way to raise the standards of
disadvantaged groups - this has been proven using data from various countries. It is fair
discrimination. The key point here in the practice of this is - there are no people from
disadvantaged groups in the upper echelons of society, and as long as they do not have a
percentage equal to their share in the population in these elite groups - administrative, education,
political etc, these measures are necessary as they do not have theeconomic or educational
resources to get to the top. In short"Without access to education, the poor will always be poor"
These things sound great in theory. Opponents of caste based reservation(myself included) have
a valid opposing idea, which practicallymeans:
Equality of outcome : By helping people even though they are not have equal
credentials/qualifications (reservation gives leeway of 10 - 40% reduction in various
parameters in India) it is not equality of opportunity but an unfair playing field - there is no
incentive for better performers and it becomes reverse discrimination.
The catch with a social net is that it has to be done short term and reduced over a period of time
so that the other forms - opportunity and autonomy can take root and grow. This never happened
in India. Besides, reservation is not justified in niche fields and higher education when a
graduation is already a requirement - ie how many time should a person get these life
boosts when it they are already have the same qualification and reached a level playing field? At
this point, a loan to fund education makes more sense than a free pass irrespective of
performance. In short
"Reservation
system
based
on
social
net
contradicts
itself"
statistics
for
India
related
to
reservation
are:
Percentages are almost the same when it comes to reserved percentage vs population statistics.
Number of people with educational qualifications, by social strata:
Graduates are 3.6% of the general population (including SC and ST), whereas it is 1.4% and
0.9% in SC and ST categories.
We are getting more kids admitted into schools (85% is really good) , but only 60% make it to
5th grade and 52% to high school. Only 7% of those admitted into the school system finally pass.
Final graduation rates from colleges are close to 3.6%, as mentioned in the previous chart. This is
not because the kids are not able to perform academically, but because of simple reasons like no
teachers, financial dependency, etc. The relative percentage of kids making it to secondary
school and college has not improved over the past 30 years.
Ie, admissions into primary education is increasing, but drop out rates and final graduate output
is almost the same. The number of graduates has increased, but not as a relative percentage - it
merely represents the increase in population.
Number
of
people
who
benefit
from
reservation
every
year:
Education : India has about 436 universities and 25938 colleges with about 2-3 million
graduates(if non technical diploma, etc are included) a year as of 2010. Educational institutions
are required to surrender 50% of their seats to the government and very few minority run
institutions are exempt from this. From that, 49% of the graduates benefit from reservation, so
about 25% or 0.75 million people are direct beneficiaries of reservation in education. This
percentage however varies between states and type of study (medical vs engineering vs arts vs
law etc) and type of institution (deemed, private, minority run or trust run, government run
colleges
have
49.5%
of
their
seats
under
the
quota).
Jobs :
The GoI (state,central,panchayats,etc in the same order of number of employees) employs 17.8
million people or 3.6% of the total workforce of India (487 million workers) and 8% of them
retire annually (because a vast majority of them were hired during the 82-93), so that is 1.4
million vacancies. Because of this, 0.7 million people get jobs under reservation quota annually.
There is no data related to economic standing of students, job seekers and their future income,
but a fair argument can be made by comparing wealth distribution over the past 40 years.
Distribution
of
Wealth
and
poverty
rate:
Poor, in an Indian context implies absolute poverty - can't buy the next meal poor or the person is
unable to make Rs.20 (36 cents) a day. By international standards, it is $1.25 a day and 32% of
Indian population is poor by that definition.
Over the past 40 years, the reservation system has hardly changed anything in terms of wealth
distribution (one of its objectives) - the upper 20% of the society controls 40% of the wealth,
while the lower 20% is left with 7%.
This is the distribution of poor people by caste, accounting for split between rural and urban
population and normalising:
It is to be noted that upper castes account for 36% of poor people and backward classes account
for 16%. This 36% of poor people do not benefit from any of these Welfare Schemes when it is
based on caste.
The official numbers are always disputed by other agencies which say that poverty is reducing by
8-12% annually like clockwork and Indian government is cooking the numbers related to
poverty. This deserves a mention here - according to them,
(Economist)
Though lower strata term is relative, the reservation system has not changed anything
drastically when comparison of poverty rates and income of the bottom 20% of society is
relatively the same compared over the last 40 years. This is more evident in rural areas. There are
a significant portion of upper caste (6% of national population) who are poor and do not benefit
from reservation. Cost of education has increased 12.5X over the previous decade - even the
cheapest institutions have five percent inflation a year. Overall, the Caste based reservation
system has achieved very little for the rural poor and has mostly fallen flat on its face in most of
the metrics. It has failed because (unfair debate left out, as what's fair to me may not be fair to
someone else) :
It has not performed in terms of quality of education (India ranks 72nd in the world by
PISA scale - pls comment if you want more details)
It is not inclusive of all the poor sections of society (poor upper castes are left out)
There is no data to support reservation based on caste has met any of its objectives after 4
decades of practicing it
Future:
The caste based reservation system is a part of the Indian Constitution and unlikely to change.
The window of opportunity to make effective long lasting changes to any Indian system is 10-15
years, and the political landscape is too busy on other things rather than trying to wrap their wits
around this. It has affected who we are as a society and it will continue to affect future
generations to come. The changes to this system can only be made by a bold government
prepared to take action with a long term vision and goals, and that is not going to happen
anytime soon.
can
be
argued
for
the
job
sector.
Fine. After writing the income based reservation part, I got thinking that this measure deserves to
be scrutinised as well. Is it truly a good way to go about welfare schemes? So I proceeded with
some calculations to see if this argument has any reasoning behind it. Implementing a income
based
reservation
system
is
tougher
than
most
people
think:
49.5%
quota:
based
reservation,
below
poverty
line
with
(this is just to contrast caste split between the existing and proposed system - ST category is
actually under represented in the existing system)
This system would ensure that people who deserve the social net benefit from it while relatively
rich people compete among themselves as they have access to facilities etc. Seems fair to
everyone right? poor people get their quota irrespective of caste. Smiles all around.
But there is a practical problem why this cannot be implemented - only 3% of poor people make
it to the stage where they can avail reservation - meaning even with 100% enrollment rate in
primary school, 47% of the 49.5% poor do not make it to high school. There are no poor people
below poverty line reaching high school to give away reserved seats to (30% of engineering seats
reserved for SC/ST students lapse in certain states already, without this system). So, this scheme
cannot be implemented without 47% of seats lapsing to general students anyway.
Alternate Demand:
Income Based reservation, with relative income as a parameter between students:
Implementing this system is dumb too. For instance, what really is the handicap that a student
with parents of income say Rs.400K a year have compared to a student with parents having
income of a 5 million rupees? Maybe in 70s, the rich parents hired a super cool tutor, but in a
digital world, the advantages are close to none - a broadband connection makes these students
even on access to resources and study materials as textbooks, tutorials etc are available for free.
This system, if implemented, would be a farce on so many levels.
To conclude, we are back to where we were 60 years ago - there is a very poor, highly
discriminated section of society that needs help and we have no well defined educational
policy in practice on a national level that helps them.
So, whats the final solution?
I do not have a clear answer to this nor the expertise, but my take would be:
education reform spread over at least 2 decades is necessary, as there is no silver bullet to this
problem. The only way to help them is to improve the education system so that more students are
retained, and provide students with access to internet so that there is equality in access to
information.
Education:
A income based reservation system with reduced quota (30% among students below poverty
line) along with increased retention of students in terms of access to education should be the
priority short term. Long term, mainstream primary education sector should be focussed on
socialistic public education (public schools mostly suck today), compulsory and partially free
(retaining mix of private and public schools with elements of Germany(Gymnasium system),
China and UK education systems in the same order) and higher studies should be capitalistic
(elements from USA, China and UK education systems in the same order). Private schools for
the gifted and differently abled should be allowed - with regulations. India can take a lot of
inspiration from China in this - these problems were faced by China 3 decades ago. China
opened up its doors to foreign universities and collaborations, which we have not done yet.
Chinese schools are ranked as the best right from primary education in terms of science, math
and reading skills. Instead of trying to write history books with an agenda, both state and central
governments should get started on these short term and long term changes on a war footing.