Union HRD minister Arjun Singh’s announcement on April 5 that the government intended to implement 27% OBC reservation in all Central educational institutions not only embarrassed the UPA government but also sought to undermine Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s strong but very nuanced commitment to the idea of ‘‘equity and access in education,’’ it is learnt. On April 4, a day before the announcement, the Cabinet Secretariat had told the HRD Ministry that it was sending the file with the draft Bill back. Its reason: Elections are on in five states so either take an EC clearance or put it off until the poll process is over. Ironically, barely 10 days before Arjun’s bombshell, the Prime Minister, addressing the Harvard Alumni Meeting on March 25, had spoken at length on the need ‘‘for academic institutions to strike a balance between the pursuit of excellence and the objective of providing access.’’ Pointing out that he himself had been a beneficiary of the scholarship system, the Prime Minister had said, ‘‘I, therefore, have every reason to believe that in a liberal democracy, Government must invest in human capabilities through scholarships to widen access to high-quality education. However, even as we facilitate access to high-quality institutions, we must ensure that quality does not suffer. This is a challenge for all those who manage educational systems.’’ The Prime Minister also made it clear that the criteria for reservations should not be just economic hardship but also ‘‘social origins’’—a euphemism for caste-based quotas. While the rising cost of education could be mitigated through scholarships, it was also necessary to go ‘‘beyond our Constitutional obligations to support certain sections of society, where means and social origins are the criterion for scholarships.’’ Elaborating, he said, ‘‘We must devise complementary schemes based on merit-cum-means to reward excellence, while maintaining schemes that widen access. I believe that the private sector and the wealthier strata of society can do more to fund scholarship programmes.’’ Conscious of the bitter ‘‘merit’’ versus ‘‘social justice’’ debate, the Prime Minister said, ‘‘Liberal opinion is often suspicious of making excellence a principle, for it sees this as elitism. Indeed, excellence does entail elitism because it is based on the notion of a performance pyramid.’’ “However,” he added, ‘‘government can and must balance the elitism of meritocracy by facilitating those at the bottom of the social pyramid to rise to the apex of an academic pyramid. Having made that transition, and having acquired capabilities and skills, the socially and economically less privileged can scale the social ladder.’’ The challenge before policy planners, he emphasised, ‘‘is to arrive at a golden mean, which makes both excellence and equity walk hand-in-hand together.’’ These remarks indicate that the government is keen to implement quotas in a manner that does not lead to a repeat of the 1990 caste wars. That would require a much more nuanced approach including an increase in the overall number of seats in institutions of higher learning, a sensitively worked out criteria for reservations, and cooperation of heads of educational institutions.
