Let146;s do the maths on social justice

Inequality exists even among OBCs, in terms of concentration of expenditure/income, land holding and formal education, which goes to validate the observation that reservations based solely on caste consideration would involve treatment of unequals as equals. Therefore, under the guise of the OBC quota, many dominant well endowed castes of India would get benefits

The Supreme Court of India has directed to keep on hold the law providing for a 27 per cent quota in central higher education institutions, including the IITs and IIMs. Casting doubts on the rationale behind using outdated 1931 census data for deciding on the size of OBCs, the court has called for a policy perspective based on up-to-date demographic information. In this context, M. Veerappa Moily, chairman of the Oversight Committee set up by the Centre, has recommended the National Sample Survey NSS and the National Family Health Survey NFHS as possible sources for such information.

We report below the results of our study based on the most recent NSS data on the 8216;Employment and Unemployment Situation in India8217;. The question regarding reservations is not simply one of using up-to-date information; but more than that. From a policy perspective, it is equally important to examine the rationale underlying the case for reservations, which would throw up the following questions: Is it simply a question of setting aside caste-based quotas in educational institutions of higher learning, if the objective is to promote empowerment and enhance opportunities for the targeted groups? Of course, in an overpopulated developing country like India, one would tend to believe that for a poor, vulnerable household, whose asset endowment consists only of labour, a strategy to promote empowerment and opportunities would have to rely largely on investment in education. If caste and class are co-terminus, there is a case for setting aside a quota for OBCs purely on caste consideration. If not, one has to bring in economic considerations also, as one of the eligibility requirements for the quota in educational institutions.

This article seeks to address the following set of questions: What is the latest profile of the Indian population with reference to its composition in terms of the major social groups, that is, the STs, SCs, OBCs and Others? What is the economic endowment profile of OBCs in terms of absolute levels of private consumption and ownership of land holdings? How far do they lag behind the mainstream as revealed in differences between the distributional profiles of these key economic variables for OBCs and those observed for the general as well as the rest of the population?

The data base as well as the key findings of our study is as follows: The National Sample Survey Organisation NSSO of the Government of India conducts various socio-economic surveys on a periodic basis. It generates statistically reliable estimates from its quinquennial surveys conducted once in five years based on large samples. The NSS on 8216;employment and unemployment8217; was conducted during the agricultural year July 2004 to June 2005. This survey covered 7,999 villages and 4,602 urban blocks, with 1,24,680 households 79,306 in rural areas and 45,374 in urban areas involving enumeration of 6,02,833 persons 3,98,025 in rural areas and 2,04,808 in urban areas. The survey also collected statistical information on monthly estimates of household consumption expenditure.

We use this information to provide an update of the economic profile of different social groups. Towards this end, we rank the population in ascending order of per capita consumption/land holding and divide it into four groups of equal population size. This may be done considering each social group separately to assess 8216;Social-Group-Specific8217; SGS inequality as well as all social groups combined 8216;All-Groups-Combined8217; AGC inequality. Thus, 0-25 per cent quartile group indicates the poorest one-fourth of the, depending upon the context, SGS or AGC population while 75-100 per cent indicates the richest one-fourth.

At the aggregate level, OBCs accounted for 40.23 per cent in the total population in 2004-05; the corresponding estimates for SCs, STs and Others were 19.75 per cent, 8.61 per cent and 31.41 per cent respectively. Here, the sub-group 8220;Others8221; includes the social groups that are not counted in SCs, STs or OBCs.

A comparative profile of the average consumption levels of different social groups by ordinal SGS expenditure groups highlights the following feature: average monthly per capita consumer expenditure MPCE of OBCs is not substantially different from that for the total population AGC, aggregate as well as across all SGS quartile groups. The average MPCE in the richest OBC quartile group is almost five times that of the poorest OBC quartile group for the year 2004-05.

To examine the issue in detail, we demarcate ordinal quartile groups formed on the basis of MPCE for the total population as a whole and estimate the percentage share of each social group falling in different quartile groups Table 2. As regards OBCs, 47.80 per cent belong to the richest two MPCE Quartile Group, which is a perceptibly significant number. The table also makes it clear that while majority of the STs and SCs belong to poorest two quartile groups, OBCs are evenly distributed across quartile groups.

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While consumer expenditure measures the actual state of well being in any given year, the long-term potential depends upon ownership of durable assets like land. Hence, we rank households in ascending order of ownership of land holdings and classify them into four equi-frequency or quartile groups Table 2. The findings show that as a social group, share of OBCs is somewhat uniform across all the quartile groups, endorsing our finding cited above that a substantial number of rich OBCs also exist.

The Gini coefficient a measure of extent of inequality of MPCE for OBCs was 0.29 in 1999-00 NSSO 55th round survey and has increased to 0.36 in 2004-05 NSSO 61st round survey. The increase in the value of coefficient indicates that the extent of inequality has increased between the two years under review. The estimates of inter-quartile disparity measure presented in Table 1 also confirm this finding. This polarisation within the OBC community, or for that matter in other social groups also calls for the inclusion of the economic criterion also in any policy aimed at the protection and promotion of welfare of the economically weak and vulnerable sections.

As the Supreme Court puts it, 8220;Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you8221;. It is obvious that the law enabling 27 per cent quota in central higher education institutions, including IITs and IIMs, will also be benefiting the 20.79 per cent of the OBC population in the richest quartile group, possibly enjoying all the benefits like easy access to institutions of higher levels of education. This is further confirmed in Table 3, which shows the education level of the OBC population across the OBC quartile groups. While around three-fourth of OBCs, who are either post graduates and above or diploma holders belong to the richest quartile group, only about nine per cent of them belong to the poorest two quartile groups of the population.

In other words, inequality exists even among OBCs, in terms of concentration of expenditure/income, land holding and formal education, which goes to validate the observation that reservations based solely on caste consideration would involve treatment of unequals as equals. Therefore, under the guise of the OBC quota, many dominant well endowed castes of India would get benefits, which in no way could be considered comparable to a situation prevailing with respect to the SCs and STs.

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In sum, the preceding discussion provides ample evidence in support of a strategy for inclusive development based on reservations with respect to both the caste and economic criteria rather than only the caste criterion.

Ankush Agrawal and Anindya Sengupta are research scholars at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai