The Hindu Business Line : Reform needs unreserved support

The Group of Ministers, considering the implementation of the increased reservation of seats in higher education to 27 per cent for Other Backward Castes, has recommended hastening slowly, limiting reservations to government-backed institutions. Given the emotional nature of the debate, a more definite result would have been a miracle. This demonstrates once again how hard it is to reform a multi-layered society with sharp contradictions and disparities. Rapid and radical social reform is difficult at the best of times, but encouraging further sub-division is certainly no help.

Policy breakthroughs that are both workable and acceptable to a large majority are proving to be almost impossible. One reason is the motivation for reform. It is not so much the desire to step up the country's economic growth but an emotional need for competitive political grandstanding, by righting a historical wrong or injustice, playing games with vote banks, or pacifying a potentially disruptive section. The only exceptions are where law-makers themselves are involved, particularly men. Committee recommendations are swept under the carpet or tied up in legal knots. Delaying tactics and sabotage have stymied many worthwhile, long over-due reforms, leaving chasms between intent and action.

The GoM may be said to have temporarily achieved the impossible, of treading water while seeming to jump half-way across the river. The target percentage has been retained as sacrosanct and the bait of increasing the base of available seats has been offered, as if to meet some criterion, albeit illogical, of leaving the absolute number of seats for other communities unchanged. This demonstrates not only a distorted understanding of reality, but also solving wrongly-defined issues with a phantom solution. Clearly, advanced engineering and administration are not realms for non-specialists and politicians to tamper with, if India has to maintain its new-found economic momentum. Getting high quality faculty is not easy. Paying such teachers a good wage is important. So too, giving them the freedom and encouragement to do industrially relevant and academically rigorous research — priorities that remain unaddressed. Autonomy and academic freedom are what attract the best and the brightest Indians to the West.

Instead this step, which must dilute entry standards, would develop layers of useless degree holders and perpetuate yet another unfortunate caste system, among those with ostensibly advanced degrees. Presumably, the object of reservations is accelerated development of the socially backward. The first step is blindingly obvious: Ensure a higher basic minimum knowledge, skills, attitudes and, crucially, an industrial work culture. Thus raise the foundations but not bring down the ceiling. Yet, everyday brings tragic stories of primary schools without classrooms, classes without teachers and students without either. Their teaching material and methods, so critical to the advancement of ability at the early stages, are pathetic and degrees useless or even fraudulent. This is no way to deal with education, jeopardising a fragile intellectual future of the country.