Proposed Quotas In India Yield Cries Of Discrimination
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DELHI, India – Draconian quotas that will force India’s colleges to select half of their students from “backward castes” and other minorities has caused outrage among the middle classes, who already face fierce competition for university places.
The government plans have also cast doubt on the ability of the country’s leading universities to compete with the best in the world.
Under current law, 27% of all university places are reserved for the “scheduled tribes and castes” that were identified at the time of independence as needing preferential treatment to help them to enter mainstream society.
But proposals to increase the caste quota to 49.5%, contained in a draft bill to be submitted to parliament next month, have raised serious questions about the meritocratic credentials of the “new” India.
Students and teachers from across the elite campuses rallied last week to protest against the plans, which they say amount to reverse discrimination that will bring down standards and hold back the country’s long-term development.
A former director of the Indian Institute of Technology, in Madras – the Harvard of Indian universities, P V Indresan, said the proposals were “a disaster” and predicted that they would do nothing to reduce inequality.
Non-quota students complain that the reservation system is open to abuse, as many “backward caste” people have already benefited from decades of preferment. Others say that a system of financial means testing would be fairer.
Medical schools have not been exempted from the quota proposals, which critics say will lead to sub-standard doctors who have qualified not on the basis of their ability but their parentage.
However, supporters among the Left-wing parties said that expanded reservations were an essential component of a drive to achieve a more just and equal society, comparing them to American “affirmative action” policies.
The economic boom of the past decade has been partly built on a pool of well-educated, English-speaking graduates but that supply is starting to dry up.
