Everyone loves the creamy layer

Let's ask ourselves two questions. One, should higher education, which is now increasingly the passport to a more prosperous station in life...

Let’s ask ourselves two questions. One, should higher education, which is now increasingly the passport to a more prosperous station in life, remain the preserve of only a privileged section of society? No, it must not. In a heterogeneous society like ours, where many sections suffer from historical disabilities in education, constitutionally mandated affirmative action is needed to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, social imbalances in higher education. This progressive perspective prompted India’s Constitution makers to introduce reservations for the empowerment of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

In doing so, the Congress party, whose members dominated the Constituent Assembly, was not motivated by the consideration of getting the votes of the SCs/STs. This crude quid pro quo electoral consideration did not cross the mind of even Rajiv Gandhi, who, after having lost power in 1989, had to grapple with V.P. Singh’s opportunistic Mandal Commission manoeuvre. In a courageous act of plain-speaking, he delivered, on September 6, 1990, what was his finest speech — and also the longest, lasting two-and-a-half hours — in Parliament against caste-based reservations. Rajiv’s views are especially pertinent in the context of the current stand-off between the UPA government and the Supreme Court on the issue of quota benefits to the “creamy layer” among the OBCs.

He gives the example of a judge belonging to an OBC caste who, after 15 years in the job, joins politics and becomes a minister. “Should he be given the benefit of reservations?” Rajiv asks. “Should his children be given such assistance? Do we want the benefits of reservations to be cornered by ministers, their sons and families? Do we want these benefits to go to landlords who have big properties?”

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This brings me to my second question. Should the grandchildren of M. Karunanidhi, Veerappa Moily, Chaggan Bhujbal, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Kalyan Singh, Ashok Gehlot — all OBC politicians — get into IITs, IIMs and AIIMS through the 27 per cent OBC quota? Wouldn’t it be negation of social justice and perversion of the constitutional principle of equality of opportunity? Take the example of Akhilesh Yadav, an MP and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son. He was rich enough to have afforded an engineering education in Australia. Can his son now justifiably claim a reserved seat in an IIT? The family wealth that some of India’s OBC politicians have amassed, the political power they wield, and the social standing they enjoy are such that calling them “backward” is akin to describing Arab sheikhs as “poor, camel-rearing desert inhabitants”.

It is truly sad that, barring the CPI(M), no other political party has objected to the mischief of privileging the OBC “creamy layer” with quota benefits in higher education. As far as the Congress is concerned, I wonder if Sonia Gandhi even knows, or cares, what her husband had said in this matter. If the Congress party still wishes to support quotas for the OBC creamy layer, let its leadership at least have the honesty to admit publicly that Rajiv Gandhi was wrong on this issue.

The quota controversy has highlighted the HRD minister’s arrogance, the prime minister’s helplessness, the ‘super’ prime minister’s sphinx-like silence, and the UPA government’s utter incompetence. But it has also exposed another major malady in our political and governance system — how it resorts to vote bank motivated tokenism in the name of social justice for OBCs, but simultaneously turns a blind eye to the most urgent and important reforms needed in higher and professional education. Reforms that, if implemented, would benefit all, including OBCs. For example, engineering, medical, management, law and other professional institutions in India are still mired in the restrictive framework of the licence-permit-quota raj. They are governed by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Medical Council of India (MCI) and other regulatory bodies, which are among the most corrupt entities in New Delhi. The manner in which their officials lord over the heads of even the most reputed educational institutions is simply scandalous. No less imperious is the behavior of the HRD ministry’s mandarins towards the directors of IITs and IIMs. India will witness a massive boom in quality-based higher education if irrational restrictions on capacity expansion are lifted, private investment is properly channeled, and institutions are unshackled in governance matters. But have you ever heard of Union HRD minister Arjun Singh addressing these issues?

Similarly, if the government were to expend as much energy on expanding and modernising the infrastructure of vocational and employment-oriented education as it has on the quota muddle, it would benefit millions of mainly SC, ST and OBC youth. India, for instance, has only 5,100 ITIs and 1,745 polytechnics, most of them outdated and ill-managed, whereas China has nearly 500,000 vocational education and training institutes! In many developed countries, nearly 75 per cent of the youth learn some job-based skill or competence or trade. In India the coverage is hardly five per cent. Who would benefit if we changed this reality? Obviously, the youth belonging to all weaker sections of society. But this requires vision, hard work and perseverance. How many of our politicians, who are mostly concerned about winning the next election, have these qualities?