Rajat Kathuria: Affirmative action

Government intervention in higher education through reservation has been debated with a keenness that is to be expected of any policy that has redistributive effects. Proponents have argued that numeric quotas will provide education to classes hitherto denied access and subsequently improve their quality of life. Opponents have argued that such blanket quotas across different social classes are iniquitous and will certainly destroy institutions of higher learning in the long run.

I don't think anybody would deny the need for affirmative action in a country where historically, access to higher education has been rather limited. To make access more broad-based, one simple but politically more difficult option is to increase the supply of institutions of higher education. Along with this, subsidy to the poor and meritorious will go much further than blanket reservations. In the interest of political expediency and to appease vote banks, the government has clearly missed an opportunity to further enhance India's growing prowess in the knowledge vertical.

When the government focuses on policing entry into the tertiary education market by specifying quotas for SC/ST and OBCs, it is turning its back on the main problem, that is, the number of applicants to institutions of higher education far exceed the available seats. Certain students can go to universities abroad to fulfill their ambitions, but those who cannot afford it have to forgo the opportunity of a higher degree. To enhance scarcity by a policy of reservations has to be the most short-sighted and poorly thought out policy to address the problem of access.

Instead, the focus should be on increasing investment (both public and private) in higher education to create access, and not on reservations. In case public investment is not forthcoming because of the numerous demands on the public purse, facilitating private entry, including foreign investment, is a good option. On private entry into higher education, a good deal of spade work is, perhaps, necessary to create awareness that higher education is not a holy cow where only the government can deliver through the university system. In a recent encounter, I had great difficulty getting past an astonished bureaucrat that I worked for a private institute that gave diplomas in management and not MBA degrees. "What are they worth without university affiliation?" was his constant refrain. A great deal, I said, judging both by demand and career outcomes.

Along with increased investment, well-crafted scholarship programmes, complemented by the deregulated and competitive finance industry, to provide loans to most promising students should be the way forward. Research in education has shown that the benefits of higher education are largely captured by students themselves in the form of the higher lifetime incomes that their qualifications command. There is a stronger case for government intervention for education at lower levels of education, where the effectiveness of such intervention and the consequent benefits to society may be greater.

The writer is professor of economics at IMI and a consultant at TRAI