Reservation Policy in Indian Institutes of Technology - Arguments Against Reservation

Arguments Against Reservation

The main argument against the concept of reservation is that it goes against the idea of merit and would dilute the IITs as one of the basic reasons behind their success is the excellent students they get via IIT-JEE. It is also being argued by the opposers that the irreparable damage caused during the childhood of the individual, cannot be rectified at a later stage. Also, the primary education provided by the government to the economically poor is highly inadequate, and this negligence by the government is the root cause of the problem. Statistics across the IIT's reveal that while about 4-5% of general category students do not complete their degree program, the number goes up to about 20% for reserved category students. This is used as an argument against reservations claiming that the reserved class candidates are not adequately prepared to face the challenging academic life in IITs.

The argument of centuries of social injustice through the caste system (see below, in the next Section) is not accepted by those who point out that the caste system, although differently known and practised in different societies, is a tribal hangover from the past, which had some merit in that it ensured, or 'reserved', specified jobs to be done castes which had a preference to do so. They have no sanction in the Vedas (the Upanishads Section) in which only speak of four broad 'Varnas' or divisions according to the temperament of people and of inter-Varna switch, or mobility, based on individual efforts when he/she happens to be borne to a man of a particular Varna. This process, called 'Samskara' is, approximately, conscious individual refinement. In a true sense, therefore, the talk of deliberate subjugation of or discrimination of upper castes against lower castes has no basis, even though distortions of the principle has happened historically, without sanction of the Vedas. Hence reservation, the anti-reservationists seem to say, is just a mask for demanding reservations under the cloak of casteism over-riding merit and blissfully ignoring that Vedas do not sanction this. At any rate, after several decades of Varna reservation for the lowest social strata comprising certain classes constitutionally enshrined as 'scheduled castes' and 'scheduled tribes', and otherwise open competition to all people irrespective of any criteria other than merit and aptitude, there is no justification for the political parties to demand extend reservation of educational admission and job opportunities to more classes ('other backward castes'). It is pointed out that more opportunities in keeping with the uncontrolled growth in population, in all spheres of economic activity as well as education, will be the only right answer and not reservation. However, since proportional representation is the basis of modern democracy as it is practised, these anti-reservationists point out, this, in India, has led to its most abominable abuse, resulting in a democracy which is of and by Indians but against their own interests, since a disunited country oblivious of equality of opportunity because of prohibitive reservation levels, can never compete successfully in the global context, nor achieve much in its own management of internal economy.(Already due to politicisation of trade unions, India's labour productivity remains among the lowest in the world, as a UK study had pointed out a few years ago.) The abuse of political power to demand reservation for all other than the so-called 'forward ' communities is, according to the contesters, just a vote bank politics to woo the majority represented by the beneficiary communities to cast their votes in their favour. Since, however, there are no opponents among political parties to educational and job reservations, in view of their universal vote bank politics, such reservation in themselves cannot favour any particular parties at the elections.

In response to the government's assurances that seats will be increased in the institutes so that the general category students don't get affected, another point raised against reservation is that most of the seats reserved for SC/ST candidates remain empty and hence any more reservation is a waste of resources. A major concern among them is also the fact that implementing reservation in institutes of higher education would be difficult unless the quality of faculty in them is diluted. They back this point by the fact that all IITs and IIMs are facing shortage of faculty and hence increasing the seats will lead to deterioration of education. For example, while IIT Kharagpur requires 667 faculties, it currently has only 470. Similarly, IIT Bombay has just 401 faculties as against the required 529.