Who Needs Quotas?

Affirmative action at the college level is not as straightforward for thesimple reason that admission requires passing high school. Reservations forcolleges, to be successful and/or have any meaning, mean that the school systemhas to have provided equal opportunities earlier.

How should one provide equal opportunity at the college level? What we knowabout capitalism is that it makes people go to extraordinary lengths to makemoney. So the walls of discrimination can easily be broken down, not throughquotas, but more effectively through the greed of owners of colleges: educationvouchers for the needy. In the quota system, public universities like the IITscan set up discriminatory rules in the form of ability or minimum standards. Inthe present quota system, all quota individuals cannot get into most goodcolleges. But in a voucher system, where effectively the state guarantees equalopportunity, the non-able SC/ST will be able to enter some private sectorcolleges. Because she has the ability to pay the capitation and other fees (viagovernment-provided education vouchers) to any university that admits her—andsome college will be willing, no matter how unmeritorious the candidate. Notethat this means a level playing field for the lesser students from both rich andpoor families.

There is another reason why the Congress party legislation for quotas forOBCs is not warranted. It is that the system, whatever it is, is already workingreasonably well. The purpose of quotas, affirmative action, is to provide equalopportunity for all. No one, not even the CPM coffee shop revolutionary leaders,is arguing for quotas or justice in the form that at every university thereshould be the same representation, as the general population.

The table above documents the state of education inIndia. The proportion of SC/STs and OBCs graduating from high school is close to43 per cent. The SC/STs share of high school graduates (16.7 per cent) is 68 percent of their share in the population (24.4 per cent), the OBCs are only 1.5percentage points below their proposed representation (26 per cent of highschool graduates vs 27.5 per cent quota in colleges).

These simple statistics should make us sit up and take notice. The one groupthat needs government support the most is Muslims. Only 7.4 per cent of childrengraduating from high school are Muslims, whereas their share in the population(Census 2001) is 13.4 per cent, i.e. their shortfall is 45 per cent (ratio of7.4 and 13.4 is 55 per cent). In contrast, the shortfall for SC/STs is 32 percent. For the OBCs, the shortfall is a minuscule 4 per cent. Very few people,and no one from the politically conscious and politically correct Congressparty, are pushing through policies to help those who need it the most—theMuslims.

The high school statistics also put in perspective how much the state canachieve by affirmative action at the college level. The shortfall for bothMuslims and SC/STs at the high school level cannot, and should not, be addressedat the college level. It is equivalent to asking colleges to admit students whohave failed high school, something not desirable in democratic societies, nomatter what the perceived social injustices visited upon these castes (andreligions) by events that happened more than five generations ago.

Students passing out of schools choose one of three alternatives, roughly inorder of ability: the least able do not go to college or enter diploma courses;the somewhat able enter diploma courses since they do not get admission intocolleges, and the most able obtain college admission. The "ability" ratios(the proportion of high school graduates entering college) across castes andreligions are approximately the same. Again, the major deviation from"equality" is observed for Muslims—they comprise 5.8 per cent of thecollege-going population, and 7.4 per cent of high school graduates.

Given this reality, it is quite unfair of Mr Advani or the BJP to accuseCongress of "appeasing" the Muslims. If anything, they have consistentlyacted, and are now acting, against the interests of the minorities, especiallythe Muslims.

Surjit Bhalla is president, Oxus Investments, and the author of ImagineThere’s No Country. This article first appeared in Business Standard,and is reproduced here with the author's permission.