Parliament of India recently passed the act to reserve 27% of seats in institutions of higher education for the Other Backward Castes (OBCs). There was not much debate or discussion on the act in the parliament as all major parties were in support. Opposition out there on the street and in newspapers op-eds was mostly emotional, opinionated and bereft of any real data or information. It is amazing how major policy decisions and discussions in India could be totally “faith-based” backed by hardly any assessment for need or evaluation for impact whatsoever.
Prof. K Sundaram’s recent EPW paper on the extent of deprivation and underrepresentation of OBCs in higher education fills this void to an extent. Prof. Sundaram has used results from NSSO surveys in 1999-2000 on consumer expenditure and employment-unemployment to show that the extent of their underrepresentation of above poverty line (APL) OBCs in enrolments at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels is marginal (<5% ) at best . This is true for both rural and urban OBCs in technical as well as non-technical education. His results are robust as in they do not change significantly on including or excluding states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh who had had reservation for OBCs for a long time now.
OBCs constitute ~36% of India’s population, way below the Mandal Commission’s projection of 52%. About 29% of them are below poverty line (BPL), almost twice as in non-reserved group of whom 14-15% are BPL. Clearly, there is much greater deprivation among OBCs than the non-reserved group. But Sundaram also shows that there is not much difference between the poor of the two groups in terms of consumer expenditure, occupational structure and even educational attainment. The poor are almost equally disadvantaged across caste-groups at least on these three counts. There is definitely a class angle here and poor across caste-groups need affirmative action.
44% of urban and 16.4% of rural non-reserved people have secondary or higher level of education against only 25% and 9.2% of urban and rural OBCs respectively. Much or all of this divergence comes from the differences in APL populations of the two categories.
Interestingly, once we narrow down our sample to young people (17-25 years of age) who have higher secondary education, as only they are eligible for undergraduate admissions, OBC underepresentation is marginal or even negative (in some categories) in both technical and non-technical disciplines. For example, 31.1% of higher-secondary certificate holders in rural India in 17-25 years age group are OBCs while the proportion of OBCs in those pursuing graduate education in technical subjects (medical, engineering or agriculture) is 33.0%, in other subjects is 26.8% and in all subjects is 27.6%. The numbers are somewhat similar for urban India. OBC underrepresentation is smaller if we looked at only APL households. Poor households by contrast have much greater OBC underrepresetnation, close to 12 percentage points in rural areas and 6 percentage points in urban India.
Policy implications are clear. First, rural areas as a whole need major push to ensure that more people there finish at least higher secondary levels of education. They are way behind urban areas in this respect. Second, OBCs fall behind [other non-reserved caste groups] not in moving from higher secondary education to graduate education but in achieveing higher secondary education itself. Reservation in college admissions won’t help to bridge this gap unless one assumes that prospect of easier college admission will motivate more among OBCs to finish school education. I don’t think that lack of motivation among OBCs is a problem right now. Lack of means is and that is where public policy should focus: making sure that more and more of backward caste students have access to quality school education. Third, poor across caste-groups are deprived and need support; affirmative action in education should have a class angle also.
Lastly, 27% reservation for OBCs will raise their proportion to 52-53% in undergraduate and graduate programs, way above their share in total population of the eligible candidates which is about 26-30% for undergraduate admissions and 20-30% for graduate admissions. Clearly, there will be a severe compromise on quality of intake with long-term negative impacts on the knowledge economy that we aspire to build.
