The State of India's Reservation Policy

Sneha Krishnan
LSS December 2007, Chennai

Education in India is, as Shashi Tharoor says (albeit about India as a whole), past the stage of development and in advanced decay. In such a situation, a policy like reservations that promises to remedy past discrimination seems like the perfect solution. However, there are significant disadvantages to this policy.

Firstly, primary education is still in a shambles with over one lakh schools in the country functioning without teachers The great divide between students passing out of private schools and those finishing from government run institutions, is meanwhile still wide. Free universal education is still a fleeting dream in India and only 85% of rural students and 51% of students from urban areas receive free education. Further, caste discrimination in villages, as P Sainath points out, keeps several students out at the earliest stage. Until this is remedied, reservations remain an empty promise. As the National Commission to review the working of the Constitution (2002 says, “Reservation was intended to be part of a comprehensive package of an entire gamut of economic, educational and social measures.”

Secondly, alternatives to the current model of caste-based reservation need to be considered, as reserved lists grow every year. Further, as several judges have noted, this has resulted in a race to prove one’s community backward; this is not healthy. The Satish-Deshpande model and the Multiple Index Related Affirmative Action (MIRAA) proposed by Prof. Purushottam Agarwal of Jawaharlal Nehru University consider various other criteria in addition to caste-caused disability. These include gender, place of education, economic status and type of schooling. The advantage of these models is that, while they do acknowledge historical caste discrimination, other forms of disability are also taken into account equally. Further, they do not propose reservations, but the awarding of points, which would count in the candidate’s favour during admissions.

Thirdly, the lack of adequate data makes all the laws that have been made and all the figures imposed purely arbitrary. Only a real census can tell if the data we have been using is accurate, and the 1931 Census information is hardly usable, as it is seventy-six years out of date. Projections from it might be approximately right, however, it is evident that a number of castes have since moved out of backwardness, or at any rate a number of individuals have, making their inclusion in reservation lists useless and a travesty of the real purpose of reservations.

Finally, reservations are, as Nehru said, “a crutch”. They are not a permanent solution to backwardness. Backwardness of any kind comes primarily from poverty and poverty implies the inability to attend private schools; and this, in India, is educational suicide. Though the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, midday meals schemes and so on have been attracting and keeping a number of poor children in school, they do not provide them with quality education. Further, the idea of providing instruction on different lines to the rural poor and the urban population is itself a form of discrimination.

Reservations on caste-basis carry with them dangerous elements of division. They were set up to help the least advantaged members of the society come up, however, they are no more than a provisional arrangement until more sustainable reforms can be made.