Prof Anil Gupta, IIM Ahmedabad

"Of the 700 students, barely five persons fail, of which some may be Dalits. Some may take longer to finish the course, they are allowed to do so."

Raja Kumar Dean, IIT Kharagpur

"Harvard should have come down by now with affirmation action providing place for blacks and ethnic minorities for many years."

D.L. Sheth, Centre for Study of Developing Societies

"They have political power and land, two aspects which go against the spirit of reservation. Mandal will only perpetuate caste."

Prof Dipankar Gupta, JNU

For Or Against Reservation?
What's on the roster?

The government has to respect the Constitution and make provisions for a just society.

• Fifty-six years of reservation has achieved little. Merit and merit alone must be the criterion for admissions.

Many castes are still on the margins. Generations have had no access to higher quality education. Reservation is the only way to bring them to the mainstream.

• A powerful OBC creamy layer has already captured political space and don't deserve quotas. Reservation is a political tool parties use to pander to votebanks.

Reservations will open up job opportunities for the backwards.

• The most backward castes will never benefit from reservation. They will still be kept out. The focus should be on primary education.

Every section of the society should have access to higher education. It should not be confined only to the affluent and the influential.

• Will put a severe strain on higher institutes of learning. Quality of higher education will suffer once standards for entry are lowered.

Quota should be implemented with the condition that institutions increase their total number of seats to correct imbalances.

• Number of seats may not increase because of resource crunch. Meritorious students will be left with no option but to study abroad.

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"I sensed I was different when the government started giving free clothes for scheduled caste students. I was ridiculed by other students and humiliated in the class. I was told being a Dalit we were supposed to skin animals and work in the farms of landlords," says Tanmay. Today, thirtysomething Tanmay is a software design engineer at Microsoft Corporation in the US. A graduate from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, reservation, he says, actually transformed his life. In the heated din surrounding the government's decision to reserve 27 per cent seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in centrally-aided institutes of higher learning, Tanmay's voice may never be heard. In fact, with the media spearheading a virtual campaign against reservations, there is a sizeable section of Dalits and OBCs who fear that empowerment through reservation will not happen if the government does a rethink on what has become a contentious issue among the elite.

But before the merits or demerits of reservations are put to question, a few common beliefs need to be addressed. They go like this:. .

• Once the 27 per cent OBC quota is added to the existing 22.5 per cent reservation for Dalits and scheduled tribes, only 49.5 per cent seats would fall into the reserved category. It would leave few seats for the rest.
  
• Dropout rates among quota candidates is very high. This proves reservation is undeserved.
  
• Most Dalit students have no academic bent of mind and do not land jobs.
  
• Since many OBC denominations belong to the affluent sections of society, quotas do not make any sense.

Parag: An electronics graduate from Nagpur, he went on to do an MTech in civil engineering from IIT Bombay. Now a senior technical consultant with software company Geometric in Pune, he feels his community needs reservations as long as discrimination persists in society. "Globalisation and social discrimination do not go hand in hand," he says.

More than anything else, it is the fear of having to fight for fewer seats that has elicited hysterical reactions from the upper class/upper castes. But a crucial point has been overlooked. Should the OBC quota be implemented, then it would be mandatory for professional institutes like the IITs and IIMs and centrally-aided universities to up the number of seats. The government is clear on this. In fact, IIT Kharagpur has already decided to add 200 seats from next year. The rest of the IITs haven't spelt out their future course of action but are expected to follow suit.

But wouldn't this be a strain on resources? Here is what Professor Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has to say: "We must ensure that every segment of the society has access to higher education and to do so we have to create a space for them even if it pinches the purse of an institution. There is no reason why professionals should come from only the affluent section of the society." Ideally, he believes that the government should push a good primary and secondary education for all, followed by affirmative action such as reservation.

Devendar Kumar: He spent a year at Allahabad University before moving on to IIT Roorkee in 1986 to acquire a BTech degree in civil engineering. Three years later, he joined the Military Engineering Services as an executive engineer. "I don't want reservations for my children," he says. But that is not because he is against the idea. "I have availed of it and benefited from it," he acknowledges. "I am quite capable of looking after my children."

The debate has also thrown up the question of whether quota students are academically inclined. Since we don't know how OBC reservation will work on the ground, the only case studies before us is of Dalits. It is often thought that their dropout and failure rates are the highest in institutions like IITs. But this is simply not true. Points out Raja Kumar, dean of undergraduate studies, IIT, Kharagpur: "Barely five persons of the 700 students fail, these include Dalits. Some may take longer to finish their course and they are allowed to do so." Adds Anup Sinha, chairperson, alumni affairs, of the same institute: "Dropout rates among our Dalit students are negligible to take note of." In fact, D.L. Sheth of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies says some of the concerns being voiced are too shrill: "If they're right, Harvard should have come down by now with affirmative action providing space for blacks and ethnic minorities for many years," he says.

Gupta too dispels the widely held view that dropout rates of reserved candidates are high. "Nothing could be further from the truth. IIM-A's dropout rate is a minuscule two per cent and that could comprise both students from the general category and those who find space in the reserved category." Perhaps it is because dropout rates of socially backwards in schools is high, and mostly for reasons other than merit, that the notion has gained currency that they will perform poorly at higher levels of learning too. Going by the list obtained from IIM, Lucknow, more than 11 SC students who passed out this year have landed jobs in corporate India. Quite understandably, the new generation of Dalits with a management degree in hand do not want their caste identities to be disclosed for fear of spoiling their careers in Indian companies—largely a preserve of the upper castes.

Sourav : He passed out of IIT Kharagpur just this year with a BTech degree in mechanical engineering. Now this lad from Patna is all set to leave for Italy to work with Danieli, a steel manufacturing company. "Reservation helped me get into IIT," he acknowledges. "But that is no guarantee for a degree. You have to work hard." And jobs? "Quota won't help you there. You are on your own."

On the threshold of starting a career in branded catering services is Sharad Babu from IIM-A. He says scholarships helped him dream of a future. He walked his way out of the slums of Chennai where he attended free tutorial classes in the evening at a local municipal school, right into the portals of IIM. Says Babu, "Till I passed out of school, I had only one pair of clothes and don't recall having more than one meal a day. My mother sold idlis so that I could study." Babu is now working out a grand plan of offering quality services at a reasonable price. He is excited that financial support is coming his way.

It is more often the lack of money that is the biggest stumbling block for Dalits. There are many students who have benefited from scholarships offered by the state and are grateful for that. Says Takshak, an M.Tech from IIT, Bombay, who is currently working with telecom major at&t, "I was offered a scholarship and this to me was the first and single-most encouraging thing that shaped my career. It's not as if I didn't have the brains. What I lacked was money and a social background." Professionals like Takshak say, as they have already benefited from reservation, they would not like to extend the same to their children. But these views, they caution, should not be taken for the entire community.

M.M. Risha : This Electronics and Communications BTech and lecturer for 18 months was a student at the Centre for Excellence, Kozhikode, which is under the 'incubation' of IIM, Kozhikode. Armed with a CEx's Certificate Course for Professional Development, she completed her MTech and is now systems analyst with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in Hyderabad. She is the first graduate in her family. Her mother teaches pre-school and father is a headload worker.

Which brings us to the debate over reservation for OBCs spelt out in the Mandal report. Should backward castes be taken as a block for upliftment? There are some who believe that the creamy layer does not deserve any reservation. Making a case for the Most Backward Castes (MBCs) of this group, who make up more than 40 per cent of the OBC population, D. Shyam Babu, Fellow at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, says: "Unlike the Scheduled Castes, with the OBCs there have always been landed castes like the Jats and Yadavs of the North and the Gounders of the South. If reservation is extended to all the OBCs without identifying the Most Backward Castes, it can lead to disastrous consequences."

Sheth does not dispute the need for reservations but says the task of identifying the privileged among the OBCs should have been completed before any future policy decision was announced. "First and foremost, the reservation policy needs to be rationalised in light of the fact that many of the OBCs identified in the Mandal report have ceased to be backward in the last 15 years," says Sheth.

Takshak : An MTech from IIT Bombay, he comes from a small village in Maharashtra. Today, he works with telecom giant AT&T. "Reservation changed my life completely. But it can help you only in gaining access. After that you have to prove yourself," he says.

Reservations in some states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have led to affluent caste groups coming to dominate public space. Professor Dipankar Gupta of the Jawahar Lal Nehru University says while reservation for Dalits was justified because they were discriminated against, the OBC reservation makes little sense. "I cannot see justification in this. While it may be true that they are not be seen in urban jobs, they have political power and land—two aspects which go against the spirit of reservation and will give caste a durable status. Mandal will only perpetuate caste. " He also cautions that the move might leave some deprived sections of the society with no option but to start educational institutions to cater to their own communities.

Prakash Singh An OBC from Tikari village in Allahabad, he scored 90.44 percentile in the GATE exam that earned him a scholarship at BITS Pilani. The BTech in mechanical engineering made him the first engineer in his village. He is currently a piping engineer with Siemens. About reservations, he says, "It is a must. It is for the government to decide on the creamy layer."

While Dipankar sounds the warning bell, there are many who think quality education will take a direct hit with the less worthy getting into professional institutes. But this may be succumbing to a stereotype. As Sanjay, a geologist with the National Hydro Electrical Power, says, "I was better than most of the students at IIT, Roorkee." He explains why he took recourse to reservation as a desperate measure. "You will understand when you see the community and the family I come from. With no money and my father working as a fitter, education was the only way out to fight the system," says Sanjay. Adds Venkat, an MIT graduate now working with Bose Corporation in Massachusetts. "I availed of reservation for getting in BE. Studying at a dysfunctional government school in Andhra Pradesh and ending up at MIT has been a long journey which I couldn't have travelled without the crucial break I got through reservations." So, is there a way out? Prof Anil Gupta reels off some solutions to dispel fears of merit getting eroded with reservation. First, he says prepare a tutorial system for the less privileged. The government should enter into a contract with coaching institutes and offer to subsidise or provide scholarships to such students. This would ensure that they are well prepared to handle the pressures of higher education.

Finally, one thing is clear: given the opportunity, many more can work their way through school and college and benefit from higher education. But the big question is, what is the kind of society we want to shape? As Anil Gupta puts it: "The question that one should be asking is not why reservations, but how do we go about building a just and equitable society."