The HRD minister has rightly proposed the quota and the prime minister has pleaded for affirmative action in higher educational institutes for uplifting BC’s educationally, economically and socially.

It is not fair to talk of merit since an average or even mediocre students are keen to pursue higher education. There should be place for meritorious and average category. The later will not improve in present system. There is no place for average students and thus they become liability to society.

Liberalisation of economy has benefited the middle class who have enough money by private institutions. Graduates also get good salaries. Therefore government should also take care of the needs of the BCs.

In addition, those entering private institutions can be made to pay smaller cess, which can be giver to the government institutions to improve physical infrastructure and additional faculty needs.

While efforts in this direction can continue, a feasible solution is to expand the capacity of higher education system, which is underutilised. Without investing government funds it is possible to double or even triple the capacity of IITs or IIMs and similar institutes.

These institutes work 180 to 200 days a year. It is possible to stretch them to 300 days or more. Classes in India start only after 9 am or even later. Even in cold countries classes start at 6 am and go on till 10 pm. This can be adopted with ease here.

Also, in the universities and institutes of higher education, the faculty are not fully loaded. And most faculties can take up double the existing load.

I look with mild detachment to see which arguments have been played up. Has the stuff about “a society based on merit” become the heart of the piece? Is there a reference to how only the creamy layer has benefited from existing reservations? And what about the traditional para about how Mandal divided Indian society?

I’m going to focus on few things about contemporary India

The entire debate is characterised by hypocrisy; by self-interest dressed up as ideology. At one level, it is the Dalits who talk of social justice but actually only support the proposals because they benefit from them. And at another, it is the upper castes that talk about merit but are only worried about getting their kids into medical school.

But there’s another, more significant, level. If you say that quotas are necessary to restore social balance and order, then you must apply this principle across all categories. And yet, nearly everyone uses the argument selectively. You will find hundreds of TV-friendly activists and fiery feminist dial-a-quote peddlers who will tell us that seats must be reserved in Parliament for women to restore the social balance. Ask many of these same women about caste-based reservation in jobs — or even in Parliament, for that matter — and they’ll suddenly sing a very different tune. So, reservation based on gender is okay. But caste-based reservation is regressive, apparently.

Or, ask the backward leaders in the BJP who tell us that more castes should be included in the reservation list why the same arguments should not be used to secure reservation for Muslims. After all, they are much worse off than most backward castes on every parameter. But not only will the BJP refuse to concede the logic but even the Congress will pretend that ‘social justice’ only applies to Hindus.



The founders of modern India — men like Jawaharlal Nehru — had a vision of a country where caste would soon become irrelevant. In the 1970s and for much of the 1980s, as electoral mandates cut across caste lines, that vision seemed to be coming true.

Then, after Mandal, everything changed. Today, Indian politics is about caste. When I was growing up, I had no idea what my caste was; nor did most of my friends. But the problem with today’s caste-based reservation is that every Indian will now need to know his caste even before he learns what his blood group is: his education and his job will depend on that knowledge.

I find it extraordinary that the Congress — which Arjun Singh represents — has so completely betrayed Nehru’s vision.



We must be the only country in the world where every parent is traumatised by the prospect of getting his or her child into school or college — not because of the expense but because of the scarcity of seats. Indians value education. So why don’t we have more schools and colleges?

If college seats were not so scarce, then nobody would get so agitated about reserving seats on a caste basis. But our politicians have failed to translate the lessons of economic liberalisation into the education sector.



If it is true, as this government claims, those 60 years after independence, the backwards still have not got social justice, then whose fault is it? For something like 50 of those 60 years, the Congress was in power. How come Arjun Singh and his Congress pals did nothing till this year?

These proposals are not about social justice at all. They are about vote banks. The Congress has lost its traditional voter base over the last decade. And it is now doing all this in an effort to lure back those voters.

Reservation has damn-all to do with balancing society. It has everything to do with winning elections.