Critique of Outlook Article

The article seems to justify a complex socio-economic issue in a country of 1 billion people by selective sampling of 5-6 students. When we already have a prejudice justifying any course of action by selective reference won't be hard. To be fair there are some pros and cons about the whole issue listed in the beginning. It would have been worthwhile if the authors would have proceeded to do some analysis along those directions.

The point of contention is that reservations which are supposed to have lapsed in 1960s have even after extension by half a century have not been efficient in delivering their stated goal of socio-economic justice. The very proof being the recent talk of extension of quotas. A policy howsoever inefficient will have a few genuine beneficiaries and that is not a justification for perpetrating for it, much less extending to hitherto untouched sectors.

The key point of similarity of all the profiled candidates are that they are from "poor and rural" background. These are economic barriers at best which besets candidates from all social strata. Did the reporters care to find out the economic profiles of the rest of the 99% candidates in the same institutions and find any siginficant correlation between caste and access to funds and educational tools? What is the percentage of the reserved candidates in the institutes who come from affluent families where in their parents and siblings have already utilized the reservation system? By personal experience, I have found the above correlation disproportionately high even among the so called dalits to justify extension to traditionally more affluent OBCs. One could easily follow a similar lopsided analysis by identifying the number of dalit/OBC students who are children of high ranking PSU, IAS, IPS and state government officials who are beneficiaries of the reservation largesse.

The other recurring theme in the analysis seems to be that reserved students don't show any greater propensity to "drop out". Again highly misleading and biased as hardly any one "fails" in the IIT/IIM system, the differentiator being the relative position in the graduating class. Did the authors find any significant statistical evidence supporting or repudiating their conclusions from the average performance of general and reserved candidates? What are the typical career choices of the reserved candidates after graduation? By personal experience I find that a significant number prefer to pursue avenues where they have a reservation advantage vice IIMs after IITs, Civil service or PSU jobs. To be fair this is a fairly rational decision on their part, one would be a fool in the cut throat competitive world not to exploit the last ounce of advantage one possesses be it caste, merit or simply wealth! But the very fact that this happens on a widespread basis is a failure of the social justice agenda of the reservation system. In effect we are undermining meritocracy to create a "wealthy oppressed" class.

No body be rich/poor, upper/lower caste, OBC/Dalit student relishes taking the IITJEE or IIM CAT or for that matter barriers of entry to greater socio-economic mobility. The fact that such barriers exist is to maintain the quality and standards of the said institutions. The aim should not be equal representation based on population percentages but making the barriers objective enough not to have any un-natural bias to a given set of populace. From that perspective a student from an affluent background from a metropolis with access to private coaching has probably a significantly more advantage compared to a poor student from a semi-urban or rural background irrespective of caste. A statistical analysis of number of IIT students from a handful of cities or rather from a select coaching institute will reveal the extent of such a bias and its wider ramifications. Unfortunately such pertinent matters will never see the light of the day due to entrenched vested interests.

The job of the government should be to ensure the quality primary and secondary components of education and tackle the issue of drop outs at those levels among the backward sections due to economic reasons. Merely reserving a couple of hundred seats in IITs and hoping that it will solve the so called caste based discrimination of populace of 1 billion is a flight of fantasy.