No quotas for higher studies, please

In its latest order, the Supreme Court has made a distinction between eligibility and qualifying criterion for the admission of OBC students. Eligibility is taken as the minimum marks to be obtained in the qualifying examination for a person to be eligible for admission, whereas qualifying marks relate to those obtained by the last candidate of the general category, who was admitted. Choice of the eligible mark is arbitrary; the qualifying mark is a fact.

UNABLE TO SURVIVE

Invariably, the eligibility criterion is lower than the qualifying marks. In its wisdom, the Supreme Court has said that in admitting students from the OBC category, only the eligibility criterion is valid and not the qualifying marks. I wonder what the IITs should do — they have no eligibility criterion and depend only on the marks obtained in the Joint Entrance Examination.

The IITs have had a long history of admitting SC/ST students. In 1971, the Indian government introduced reservation of 22.5 per cent for the SCs and STs in admission to the IITs. It was done hurriedly and without preparation.

Reportedly, there was a case in one of the IITs, where a student was admitted with zero marks in all four subjects of the entrance examination. While the other SC/ST students had realised they had performed badly and opted out of the later examinations, this particular candidate had entered all four exams, and as it happened, there were not enough students to fill the quota, and so he too was admitted.

At this stage, I became the Dean in IIT Delhi, in charge of undergraduate courses. Realising what a travesty of justice it would be if such poor quality students were allowed to continue for five years or even more without any prospect of getting a degree, I introduced minimum performance for continuing in IIT. At the end of the year, of the 53 SC/ST students admitted, admission for 47 of them was terminated. In fact, one of them wrote me a letter of thanks for saving his career.

Professor Nurul Hasan, the then Minister for Education, called me for an explanation. I told him that every student had written two sets of internal tests, two semester examinations and also a supplementary examination. On each occasion, I had sent letters to the student and to the parents, expressing my concern at the poor performance and fears that if they continued in the IIT, their future would be ruined.

The Minister was impressed but still concerned. He went through the list of students who had been terminated and found one Ashok Chaturvedi there. Ye kaisa aa gaya (how did he come in here?) he asked. I explained that the IITs give automatic admission to the top 10 students from each school board and that he was one of them. He looked at me and then asked aap kya lenge — chai or coffee? (What will you have, tea or coffee?) That was that.

MINIMUM PERFORMANCE

In a subsequent meeting, I suggested that no SC or ST student should be admitted without securing a minimum of two-thirds of the marks listed for admission for the general candidates to the IITs and to the BHU.

That did not help because not enough candidates qualified. Mr Shankaranand, himself an SC, had become Minister for Education and, at first, he objected to the suggestion made by the Additional Secretary, Professor Jha, to reduce the qualifying marks further, by saying that it would bring a bad name to the community. In the end, he yielded.

Nowadays, the cut-off is 50 per cent. Unfortunately, sympathy and charity have not helped. Even after 40 years of reservation, SC/ST candidates do not seem to be doing well in the IITs. In IIT Delhi, general category students passed out with an average Grade Point Average of 7.5, whereas the SC/STs had an average of around 5-6. By IIT standards that is low, very low.

EARLIER RESERVATION

In the light of this record of nearly 40 years, I conclude:

Reservation atthe IIT level has not helped SC/T candidates.

It is inconceivable that a community that produced an Ambedkar cannot produce a few hundred students each year to perform well in the IITs.

Therefore, the system used by the IITs does not attract the best students from the SC/ST communities. SC/ST candidates look for a career in government establishments, which only reserve posts for their community but do not show any preference to IIT graduates.

Hence, it appears that good quality SC/ST candidates voluntarily prefer to study in institutions other than the IITs, where the competition is less severe and admission is easier. Thus, it appears highly probable that the IITs are not attracting the best students from these communities.

I go further and suggest that reservation at the university level is not the correct solution to the backwardness of communities. Instead, reservation should be given at the earliest stage — say at the end of the first standard, or at the most, the fifth standard.

I suggest that in each district, a hundred or two hundred best students be selected at this low level and sent — with adequate scholarships — to the schools from where the IITs and other such institutions get their regular students. With such good education, the SC/ST students should be able to compete, on equal terms, perhaps, without any need for special privileges.

Selected students may even be below the poverty line (BPL) — they will mostly be SC/STs — but will definitely not bear the stigma of caste. The “SC Brahmins” — who want to preserve their hegemony rather than truly help the underprivileged — are likely to object. But then, there is the Supreme Court; but that is another story.

(This is 310th in the Vision 2020 series. The last article appeared on August 13.)

(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras. >blfeedback@thehindu.co.in and >indiresan@gmail.com )

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