The Q word

With the Supreme Court staying the 27 per cent reservations for OBCs in IIMs and IITs, the tired old oppositions are bound to come rushing back. Executive versus Judiciary. Legislature versus Judiciary. Pro-reservationists versus anti-reservationists. Already political parties, with an eye on the upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh, have plunged into the perceived troubled waters. The BJP has blamed the UPA, the CPI has called the SC order 8220;retrograde8221; and there have been calls for Parliament to immediately intervene. But beyond the professional name-calling, the apex court judgement can also afford public debate in our country some crucial space to take up issues that have been unfortunately shelved in the fiercely political quota debate.

To begin with, the latest evidence of judicial circumspection on the reservation policy should come as no surprise to the political class. In 2005, remember, the court ruled that the government could not enforce mandatory quotas for admission to professional courses in private unaided minority and non-minority institutions. A 7-judge bench had held that un-aided institutions had an 8220;unfettered right to choose students and procedure8230; being fair, transparent and non-exploitative8221;. The court has interrogated the policy8217;s silence on the exclusion of the 8220;creamy layer8221;. It has questioned the government8217;s urgency on implementing the legislation this year without 8220;relevant determinable data8221;. Who are the socially and educationally backward classes? The court8217;s latest intervention does well to again ask why in a quick-changing India, an over seven decades-old census is used to answer that question.

But there are other questions as well that must come to centrestage in the pause decreed by the court. What is the real crisis in higher education in India? Why do the proposed solutions hark back to the thinking and vocabulary that dominated the discussion on the manufacturing and service sectors in pre-reform India 8212; a shortage economy rife with licensing, lack of competition, bad quality, and inferior service. In such an economy, the traditional response veers towards rationing, price controls and quotas. Happily, the manufacturing and service sectors have changed since. The time has come for the higher education sector to get the policy debate it deserves too. We must talk of increasing the supply of high quality higher education so that it can meet the vaulting demand for it in a country where the median age of the population is 24. We need to talk about regulation, not licensing. In the end, only supply side responses will address issues of social justice.