Most of the comments, from the so called “forward thinking Indians”, are from ignorance of real issues, misinformation about the extent of social backwardness, and a misplaced paranoia that “incapable” persons are eating away jobs. The country, therefore is going to the dogs. Apparently mainstream students can do no harm to the country. They are, after all, filled to the brim with “merit” and “efficiency”. Most of these “forward thinking Indians”, on this forum, do not even understand what “egalitarianism” is (and yet they are somehow “forward thinkers”), and that, it is this “egalitarianism” that is the basis of the concept of equality enshrined in our constitution, and that, it is this “egalitarianism” that allows them to enjoy half the things that they take for granted e.g. heavily subsidized services which includes, higher education. That the affirmative action or positive discrimination is the result of this sense of equality, escapes the understanding of our “forward thinking Indians”. Pity.
Equality, as enshrined in our constitution, can work, if the society at large, is more or less equally capable of accessing the resources of opportunity. If however, one group of people is incapable, for whatever reason, the same concept of “equality” becomes a farce. It, then becomes necessary, for the govt. to ensure that the group that is incapable, as such, is given adequate support, so that they can be on an even keel with the rest. Economic benefits, given out by the govt. arise out of the same concept – that, a person can’t be penalized for being economically too weak to access the various opportunities, which he could otherwise access. But what about a person then, who can’t access the very same opportunities, not only because he is economically incapable, but additionally and primarily because he is placed far down the social pecking order. How does the same govt. ensure, equality for that person who is handicapped on two counts – economic and social.
The common argument, this liberal with “medieval mindset” has got from the “forward thinking Indians” is an ingenious denial of, first, the existence of discrimination and second, the existence of social backwardness. I have a doubt, if these “forward” Indians are even aware, that the arguments they have made, require those ingenious denials. One member is actually on record claiming bliss in ignorance. The one-size-fits-all solution, favoured by these “forward” Indians, is of course, reservation on economic criteria. This implies, that social backwardness is not independent of economic backwardness and therefore, it is this economic backwardness that needs to be removed first. After all, “its a proven fact that removal of economic constrains on a person enables him to be independant and free from possible oppression by others”. So remove economic backwardness and voila, social backwardness will disappear. Just as easy as snatching a candy from a two year old kid. Naïve and arrogant.
That money equals social advancement, is farcical on many levels, particularly in the absence of any clear mechanism to measure social advancement on economic scale. Recently, in 2008, Hon’ble Supreme Court (SC) passed a decision staying the quota increase and directing the govt. to determine, among other things, the so called “creamy layer”. This sent the striking students into an orgy of celebration, but they forgot to read the caveats placed by the SC. While directing the govt. to determine the “creamy layer”, the SC makes the following, pretty interesting, observation:
A.K.Thakur v/s Union of India said:
In our opinion, it is not a question of permissibility or desirability of such test but one of proper and more appropriate identification of a class a backward class. The very concept of a class denotes a number of persons having certain common traits which distinguish them from the others. In a backward class under clause (4) of Article 16, if the connecting link is the social backwardness, it should broadly be the same in a given class. If some of the members are far too advanced socially (which in the context, necessarily means economically and, may also mean educationally) the connecting thread between them and the remaining class snaps. They would be misfits in the class. After excluding them alone, would the class be a compact class. In fact, such exclusion benefits the truly backward. Difficulty, however, really lies in drawing the line how and where to draw the line? For, while drawing the line, it should be ensured that it does not result in taking away with one hand what is given by the other. The basis of exclusion should not merely be economic, unless, of course, the economic advancement is so high that it necessarily means social advancement. Let us illustrate the point. A member of backward class, say a member of carpenter caste, goes to Middle East and works there as a carpenter. If you take his annual income in rupees, it would be fairly high from the Indian standard. Is he to be excluded from the Backward Class? Are his children in India to be deprived of the benefit of Article 16(4)? Situation may, however, be different, if he rises so high economically as to become say a factory owner himself. In such a situation, his social status also rises. He himself would be in a position to provide employment to others. In such a case, his income is merely a measure of his social status. Even otherwise there are several practical difficulties too in imposing an income ceiling. For example, annual income of Rs.36,000 may not count for much in a city like Bombay, Delhi or Calcutta whereas it may be a handsome income in rural India anywhere. The line to be drawn must be a realistic one. Another question would be, should such a line be uniform for the entire country or a given State or should it differ from rural to urban areas and so on. Further, income from agriculture may be difficult to assess and, therefore, in the case of agriculturists, the line may have to be drawn with reference to the extent of holding. While the income of a person can be taken as a measure of his social advancement, the limit to be prescribed should not be such as to result in taking away with one hand what is given with the other. The income limit must be such as to mean and signify social advancement. At the same time, it must be recognised that there are certain positions, the occupants of which can be treated as socially advanced without any further enquiry. For example, if a member of a designated backward class becomes a member of IAS or IPS or any other All India Service, his status is society (social status) rises; he is no longer socially disadvantaged. His children get full opportunity to realize their potential. They are in no way handicapped in the race of life.
The SC realizes, that economic criteria alone, is not nearly enough. It realizes, that money alone doesn’t necessarily translate into social advancement. A large section of backward community will remain untouched and unaffected if reservation is implemented on economic criteria alone. This is because, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine, how much of economic advancement translates into social advancement. It is easy, in case of rich people, but they are too few and far between. The problem arises when it comes to, what is called on economic scale, the middle class. Should a middle class family, then be excluded from the benefit of reservation, simply because they are not poor enough to claim reservation, and yet socially just as backward. How would their social backwardness be remedied? This is highlighted by the SC by the illustration of backward class carpenter. The reservation based solely on economic criteria, fails miserably to address these complex issues, because, it uses a one-size-fits-all economic scale to identify the needy, completely disregarding the social aspect of the reasons of disparity.
I had quoted before, Professor Amartya Sen, on how he agrees that, although “class” is a major cause of discrimination, it is certainly not the only cause and that, if any remedy, aimed at social improvement, is to be formulated, these dimensions are to be considered with equal gusto. We have here, the SC, echoing almost the same thing. We have numerous social scientists, some of whose research I have myself referenced here, saying the same thing. But apparently our “forward thinking Indians” are not convinced by the “medieval mindset” of these luminaries.
Another gripe, of the “forward thinking Indians”, regarding the reservation at higher education is that: why should a person, scoring less than a “forward thinking Indian” belonging to the mainstream, get to study at premier institute, while I, the “forward thinking Indian”, possessing magical powers with which I can, and intend to, transform India into a land of milk and honey, languish in a less than average private college? This essentially is another way of saying, “merit” is being discriminated against.
This arises from a complete ignorance of social dynamics and its impact on resource sharing. The idea behind the reservation at higher education revolves around a seemingly simple question: Why do students from backward community score less than the mainstream students?
Almost all “forward thinking Indians” on the forum, give an equally simple answer, or at least point in that direction - they don’t work hard enough. Reason takes a back seat to elitism, fuelled by ignorance. Oppressed throughout their entire existence, and now the students from backward community have to bear the accusation that they are “lazy”.
Many of the backward class students, admitted to higher education, are first or perhaps second generation literates. They come from families, where for generations, nobody has stepped into a school, and have remained confined within a specific profession or vocation (and in some cases, as with ST, even within the same locality) and have been precluded from sharing the state resources. This has skewed the social advantage, disproportionately, in favour of the forward class. It is this, social backwardness, that makes it impossible for the students coming from these communities, to compete with the students in general quota. Their hard work is gobbled up by their social backwardness. Mandal Commission observes:
The Mandal Commission Report said:
Assuming that a child from an advanced class family and that of a backward class family had the same intelligence at the time of their birth, it is obvious that owing to vast differences in social, cultural and environmental factors, the former will beat the latter by lengths in any competitive field. Even if a backward class child’s intelligence quotient was much higher as compared to the child of advanced class, chances are that the former will lag far behind the latter in any competition where selection is made on the basis of ‘merit’.
If only a single qualifying score is set, then it will result in asymmetric representation of the communities, with the forward class taking up almost all the seats, with very little to no representation from the backward communities. Affirmative action seeks to remove this asymmetric representation of communities through distribution of score, in a manner so that the difference in relative social position is reflected in the qualifying scores and thereby ensuring, that the individual communities are judged separately and not in terms of another community.
The above argument is supported by Rohini Somanathan, in her paper “
Assumptions and Arithmetic of Caste-Based Reservation”.
R.Somanathan said:
Suppose that there are two equal sized groups, A and B (“advanced” and “backward” if you like) who would like to enter institutions of higher education and a test is used to ration available seats. Test performance depends on a variety of other household characteristics which we call “social advantage”. This term is meant to capture economic resources, parental education, social status and networks, all of which influence the schools attended by these students and learning that takes place within and outside these schools.
As a benchmark case, suppose that only those in group B are socially disadvantaged, that the scores for groups A and B are clustered around their medians tA and tB respectively (tA>tB), and that the extent of social disadvantage is well captured by the difference tA-tB. If half of all applicants are admitted and the qualifying scores for both groups are the same, group B will be under-represented. Any affirmative action policy that leaves the score distribution unchanged but seeks to restore the balance in the shares of the two groups admitted must necessarily drive a wedge between their qualifying scores. In this case, using tA and tB as the qualifying scores for the two groups ensures half of each group gets admitted. Controlling for social disadvantage in this case leads to equal representation of both groups because disadvantage fully accounts for the differences in their medians. Stated more generally, for any population shares of the two groups, group B will be under-represented in the absence of affirmative action policies if the test score distribution for group A first-order stochastically dominates that for B. Setting group-specific qualifying thresholds will lead to equal representation if differences in the distributions of scores across groups arise only because of social disadvantage.
The answer perhaps is not as simple, as some “forward thinking Indian” would like to think.
Some “forward thinking Indians” are having sleepless nights, that if any reserved category qualifies in general quota he still “has to wear” a mark of humiliation, “his whole life”. Irony is that, they are the ones who are first making such derogatory, stereotypical comments, then pretending to feel sorry for their humiliation, and then using this as an argument against reservation.
Be casteist to remove casteism. Hypocrisy has a new friend.
