Class apart

The Lok Sabha’s assent to the OBC bill starts the endgame of a process that will require many higher education institutions to statutorily extend the number of reserved seats. The deeply divisive debate that preceded the bill is well known. The enlightened consensus now is that the jury should be out. If the Government succeeds in increasing teaching infrastructure-supported supply of higher education, not only would general category applicants’ valid but narrower concern be seen to be addressed but it would hopefully start addressing the larger question: the serious shortage of quality higher education in India, a lacuna that includes such basic problems as dysfunctional certification systems.

But even if all of this goes well — a big if — the political class should be ready for a set of questions they dodged again but one that will get uglier as the reservation ball keeps rolling; and this ball will keep rolling, witness some of the prescriptive commentary on the Sachar report. Despite the advice of the parliamentary standing committee, the bill has not excluded the creamy layer in OBC higher education reservations. This is an old vice, of course. The August 1997 recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on excluding creamy layers from OBC job quotas have never been implemented. But repetitions don’t right wrongs. And this time, after a wide-ranging debate, in the latter part of which came a Supreme Court ruling that favoured creamy layer exclusion for SCs/STs in government service promotions, there was a real chance to take another look at the issue.

It might interest our politicians that America is awaiting what is formally a US Supreme Court judgment on a dispute over racially integrated schools in Louisville, Kentucky but what could turn out to be a paradigm-shifting ruling on the constitutionality of affirmative action. Among the issues being furiously debated is whether preferential treatment should be given to children of African-American parents who have benefited from affirmative action and/or are clearly affluent. This has become the almost unanswerable question for those who support the principle of state-sponsored diversity in education and employment. If India’s political class wants quotas to retain broad popular support, it will be in their own interest to revisit the question of who deserves quotas.

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