Editorial: The OBC ruling

Once all the political parties had lined up behind it, and once it became clear that reserving 27 per cent of the seats in Central educational institutions for the Other Backward castes (OBCs) did not violate the basic structure of the Constitution "" which already provides for a 22.5 per cent quota for the scheduled tribes and castes "" only an ostrich would have expected the Supreme Court to rule against the 93rd Constitutional amendment. With this ruling, the interim order of March 29, 2007, staying the implementation of the Act, has been lifted. A five-judge Constitution bench has given a unanimous verdict.

This means that from the coming academic year, general category seats for which there is open competition stand reduced to 50.5 per cent, from 77.5 per cent "" a drop of more than a third. The government seems to be clear that it will implement the decision in one shot, and not do a three-year phase-in as had been suggested by the Moily panel. The decision applies to 20 Central universities, the IITs, IIMs and colleges supported by the government, with many state governments (like Tamil Nadu) having already taken comparable action in their education sectors. The Bench wants a periodic revision of the quotas. But experience shows that such a revision "" downward, at least "" will never happen.

It is futile to argue at this stage that what the Supreme Court has now approved is not warranted in terms of social equity, or that the Mandal Commission's basis for classifying castes and thus defining OBCs was flawed. It has been a journey of nearly three decades since that commission gave its report, and nearly two decades since large-scale protests erupted after the VP Singh government first introduced OBC reservations. Indeed, from being a highly divisive issue in 1990, the subject now has near-universal endorsement among the political class; the contests now will be on which caste or sub-caste can manage to get the OBC tag "" recall the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan last year because they saw the rival Meenas (recognised as OBCs) getting ahead. There could also be some attempt to remove the Supreme Court's exclusion of the "creamy layer" from the new reservations. The best approach would be to accept the new reality, hope for greater educational "inclusion", and see how best to deal with what has been sanctified as law, without causing fresh tension and disruption.

The starting point is to note that there is, in fact, a heavy preponderance of upper castes in the elite educational institutions. Two scenarios are therefore possible. One is that the additional reservation will not make much of a difference if there are minimum cut-offs for entry, making it a repeat of the experience with SC/ST reservations. Life then will go on as before. The second scenario would be if the reservations did make a substantial difference "" what, then, about the deserving students who belong to the upper castes? The solution would lie in increasing the number of options for all bright students, including by allowing more private universities and other private educational institutions. This method has worked well in the southern states in the case of medical and engineering colleges (many of them started by politicians, who perhaps know best how to exploit what is officially supposed to be a non-profit sector). The point is to ensure that, within a few years, there is a sharp increase in the supply of seats. After all, quotas and rationing are needed only when there are shortages. The question that is not asked often enough, or loudly enough, is: Why should there be shortages in the first place?