Students protesting quotas are late by a few thousand years. Caste based reservations have been the basis of our social order for most of our recorded history. The concern for merit is legitimate.
However, it must be understood that when seats in institutes of higher learning are reserved for certain sections today, they will be filled not by a draw of lots, nor through nominations by influential political leaders, but by the same process of tests as is used for the general category.
Except that in this case the eligibility will be restricted to SCs, STs and OBCs who comprise about 70 per cent of our population.
Which means that around 49 per cent quota seats in higher education institutions are going to be filled by competition among a section of our society, which numbers over 700 million.
Even if one per cent of this group reaches the qualification age every year, over seven million young people will be eligible to jostle for a few thousand reserved seats in these institutes. Is it possible that even among seven million people we cannot find a few thousand people of merit?
If this is so then obviously something is drastically wrong with our social order and it reinforces the general policy of reservations. It means that the handicap that these sections started with when India became free persist to this day.
One reason for that is that the levers of power and influence remain in the hands of the so-called upper castes and they are loath to let those at the lower rungs come up and compete.
The concern for merit thus becomes the most powerful argument for continuation of reservations, or their further extension.
Even after candidates have secured admissions in the reserved quota, they will have to undergo the same rigorous training and pass the same tests as others, before they qualify for their degree. One question, however, would still need to be asked.
Have we identified the backward classes correctly? The data that the Mandal Commission used pertained to the 1931 census. No caste enumeration has taken place subsequently.
Even the Mandal survey is almost 30 years old. Much has changed since then. Should we not at least ascertain which are the genuinely backward classes, and what are their numbers, before the latest tranche of reservations comes into effect?