Friday, June 02, 2006

Zoya Hasan: Countering social discrimination


... Given the persistence of social discrimination, the question that must be posed should not be confined to the limited point as to whether preferential treatment must be in the form of quotas or affirmative action of a broader scope. Rather, the question should be: would alternative measures produce the same outcomes that mandatory quotas produce?

While reservation might not be the best or the only method of correcting longstanding discrimination, however, it is one of the more workable and feasible mechanisms for increasing access of disadvantaged groups to higher education; chiefly because it is transparent, enforceable, and easy to monitor. In the hysteria generated by the protests, we must not forget that the Indian reservation policy has been quite effective and has produced positive outcomes. For example, the proportion of Scheduled Caste students in the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (2003-02 to 2003-04) is about 9 per cent, which is below their allocated quota of 15 per cent but even this would have been hard to achieve in the absence of quotas. The proportion of OBC graduates, on the other hand, is a mere 8.6 per cent. So far, with the exception of a few institutions, such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University, which has designed an admission policy that gives additional points for social and regional backwardness helping to increase the OBC student intake to roughly 20 per cent of the student population, there is very little evidence of voluntary schemes of affirmative action in other institutions of higher learning.

That's from Zoya Hasan (School of Scoial Sciences, JNU) in a Hindu op-ed today.

5 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Creamy layer rules should be more complex than a simple economic cut-off

    That is the punchline. I believe Dr. Bruno was saying the same thing.

    As soon as you throw in things like endogamy, social mobility, stratification etc., sane debate goes out the door. It is hard to digest how a 52% strong group can feel socially stratified.

  2. Anonymous said...

    My question....

    This creamy layer is something that is going to be done within OBC....
    This is essentially to make sure that the benefits of Reservation go to the downtrodden in BC and not the sons of IAS officers.....
    Now will get benefitted by Creamy Layer concept.. The poor BC and MBC Candidates

    Will the seats in General Pool increase or decrease due to Creamy Layer . NO... No increase or no decrease
    Why then is the forward caste lobby asking for Creamy Layer.....
    Forward Castes have no right in this section....

    I can understand Forward Caste people saying "no reservations" (as their seats are going to be given to OBC, but why do they care about this Creamy layer

    Think for yourself and you will know the real intention......

  3. Anonymous said...

    Doctor,

    You have a point. Actually about half a point.

    You say that the reason forward castes are insisting on the creamy layer is because if it is enforced, chances are not all 27% will be filled because of the minimum cut-off insisted upon by IITs etc. So they are being sneaky.

    Unfortunately it does not hold good because the seats that are not filled within quotas are not allowed to be filled by GC candidates.

  4. Anonymous said...

    ..but why do they care about this Creamy layer..


    I wild guess: Because they hate giving up their seat to a richer, more connected, better schooled, landowning, third or fourth beneficiary. All in the name of social justice.

    Another wild guess: As more and more sections get our of quota benefits, they will directly join the anti-quota group, thereby balancing the numbers.

    It is also entirely possible that the forward castes are not as evil and scheming as we think, maybe they are just encouraging a just system and are pointing out how horribly broken it is.

    Why do you restrict comments on your blog to those with "blogger ids" only ?

  5. Abi said...

    Interesting. Zoya Hasan makes the point about how quotas have allowed SC/STs to do better than the OBCs in the IITs, and attributes it to a quota program that is 'transparent, enforceable and easy to monitor'. And sure enough, the argument veers off into something that's not particularly 'transparent, etc."!

    Dr. Bruno: The support for OBC reservation is based on one's sense of social justice. Thus, the question about 'creamy layer' is fair game. This question is answered through political negotiation, not through brushing aside the questioners.


    Barbarindian: Tell me this: if you are so completely against quotas, why is it that *you* are arguing over creamy layer? What's in it for you?

    RC: I agree with you that forward castes may not be evil!