Union HRD minister Arjun Singh’s proposal to decree a 27 percent quota for OBC students in IITs, IIMs and Central universities has provoked widespread indignation countrywide, and campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests. Dilip Thakore reports For the great majority of India’s students constitutionally barred from availing quotas and reservation in institutions of higher education, the world’s toughest entrance examinations are all set to get tougher. On April 5 Union human resource development (aka education) minister Arjun Singh — often described as India’s perpetual prime minister in waiting — grabbed headlines and prime-time coverage in the national media with a bombshell announcement that the 17-party coalition United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has approved his ministry’s proposal to reserve an additional 27 percent of capacity in all Central government promoted universities and institutes (JNU, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, etc) for OBC (other backward castes) students. “The decision was taken by the prime minister and the cabinet. Parliament has passed a law; we are implementing it,” Singh told a television news channel. This seemingly innocuous and politically correct declaration of intent has precipitated a veritable rain of editorials, op-ed articles and analyses by media pundits, educationists and sociologists (see box p.32), because positive discrimination or affirmative action favouring castes and tribes which suffered discrimination and deprivation for centuries under the hitherto rigid Hindu varna or caste system, is a provenly explosive issue in Indian politics. Following this announcement which has also provoked the wrath of the Central Election Commission, the National Knowledge Commission and reportedly prime minister Manmohan Singh (who has maintained a studied silence on the subject), campus India is bracing itself for a festival of student protests. The last time round in 1990 when the then prime minister V. P. Singh pulled a forgotten decade old report of the Mandal Commission recommending varsity and government job reservations for backward castes (other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs) for whom 22.5 percent of available seats have been reserved since 1950) commensurate to their population out of the mothballs, the student community in north India in particular responded with nationwide street and campus rioting. Inevitably the legality of the government jobs reservation order was challenged and while allowing reservation for socially and educationally backward classes of citizens, the Supreme Court imposed a 50 percent ceiling on reservations in government employment (and education instit-utions). The short-lived Janata Dal fell soon after in 1990 following violent anti-government demonstrations and especially after one student committed suicide by immolation, and the issue of additional reservations for OBC students in Central government educational institutions was put on the backburner by the successor Congress government headed by Narasimha Rao. Meanwhile down south, state governments pursued their own reservation policies with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka reserving more than 50 percent of capacity in higher education institutions for SCs, STs and OBC students. Now as five states prepared to go to the polls in April-May, Arjun Singh has suddenly invoked the Supreme Court judgement in Indira Sawhney vs Union of…
