Quotas Anger India's Young

The Seattle Times

By Reuters And The Associated Press

June 1, 2006

Caste division

India's new policy to more than double college seats for low-caste candidates has invited a backlash and protests from upper-caste students and professionals who fear the death of meritocracy.

NEW DELHI — Medical student Karen Puri has abandoned his studies for the past two weeks to sit on a dirty carpet in the Indian capital's searing summer heat.

Three years ago the upper-caste student failed the tough admission test for medical school, passed over in favor of lower-caste candidates who scored lower marks.

A year of grueling studies later — no parties, no movies, no social life — he finally won a place at a medical college in New Delhi.

But Puri's frustration turned to anger last month when the government announced a plan to more than double seats for lower-caste candidates in government-funded colleges and universities.

"Instead of promoting merit, this government is promoting caste. That is what makes us mad," said the 21-year-old Puri.

Behind him, a large banner reads boldly: "We want democracy, don't want quota-cracy."

The government says it will increase the number of reserved places for lower caste and tribal students in universities, medical colleges, engineering institutes and management colleges from 22.5 percent to 49.5 percent in 2007.

This has sparked widespread outrage among upper-caste students and professionals, particularly doctors, who have launched weeks of nationwide protest and hunger strikes.

Government doctors Wednesday ended a 19-day strike against the policy change hours after the Supreme Court ordered them back to work.

Along with the striking doctors, tens of thousands of medical students and young software programmers, engineers and bankers have protested the affirmative-action plan.

Modern India likes to boast about its emergence on the world stage and its booming information and pharmaceutical sectors, but the backers say the policy would help undo centuries of oppression and discrimination. Hinduism divides people into castes and, while the system has been officially outlawed, discrimination remains common.

Reservations, as the quotas are called, for lower castes were introduced after independence from Britain in 1947 in an attempt to address the problem. In 1990, a similar move to increase quotas in government jobs also led to outrage, and dozens of upper-caste students burnt themselves to death.

The first main beneficiaries were the Dalits, who used to be known as untouchables, who sit at the bottom of the social scale and many traditionally worked as sweepers or cleaners.

But the government now wants to extend education quotas to what is known as the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) who might be anything from small farmers and minor landowners to boatmen, cotton weavers and milkmen.

"Had it not been for the quota system, I would never have got a seat in a reputed medical institution," said Narendra Kumar Verma, a 31-year-old doctor from the Kurmi lower caste community. Verma benefited from a state-level quota for OBCs and went on to become a doctor in the radio-therapy unit at a state-run hospital in the northern city of Lucknow.

But studies by the elite Indian Institute of Technology schools showed half the seats for tribal and Dalit students remain empty as not enough of them qualify for the minimum admission standards. It also revealed one in four do not complete their degrees, unable to cope with the exacting curriculum.

The problem, it implies, lies in inadequate primary and secondary schooling, which fails to give enough opportunity to the poor — an issue much tougher and more expensive to address than slapping on quotas on elite higher-education institutes.

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones,
Department of English
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Email: carlgj@english.ucsb.edu