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India's Ethnic Quotas Are a Cautionary Tale



Here are five words no politician in India dares utter: Quotas are a terrible idea. Seven decades after the country first embraced caste-based quotas in education and government jobs, they have become permanent entitlements that cement social divisions, encourage mediocrity and poison political discourse. It’s a cautionary tale of identity politics run amok.

Independent India’s founders saw quotas as a remedy for historical injustices, in particular for tribals and Dalits, once known as “untouchables,” who are outside Hindu society’s fourfold caste system. Instead they have expanded over time to cover more castes. Today they reflect political clout more than a history of oppression. As private-sector job growth falters, the clamor for quotas builds.

Earlier this month the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—with the support of most other parties—enacted a constitutional amendment to breach a 50% cap on quotas set by the Supreme Court of India in 1992. Unless the courts strike it down, a new 10% quota for “economically weaker sections” among the so-called upper castes and religious minorities will reduce to 40% the share of federal jobs and university slots subject to open competition.

That proportion could shrink further. In the state of Tamil Nadu, shielded from the Supreme Court ruling by a special constitutional arrangement, quotas have long accounted for 7 in 10 state college admissions and government jobs. Last year, another large state, Maharashtra, raised quotas to 68%. Across India, activists want to extend quotas to the private sector, the judiciary and the military.

Not everyone views India’s experiment with caste-based affirmative action as a failure. In a phone interview, Abhinav Prakash, a Delhi University economist who writes on Dalit issues, hails “reservation”—the Indian euphemism for quotas—as “one of the few policies that has succeeded by creating unprecedented social-economic mobility.”

Mr. Prakash says that in a long-stratified society like India’s, “the notion that if you remove reservation, you will encourage merit is laughable.” Instead, members of dominant castes would squeeze out everyone else. Mr. Prakash would like to see the government fill existing quotas more aggressively.

Supporters of reservation point to the progress India has made in fighting caste discrimination. Parliament long ago outlawed discrimination against Dalits. Two of them have served as president, including the incumbent, Ram Nath Kovind. Dalit leader Mayawati has served four times as chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. So-called upper castes have largely surrendered their grip on political power.

In social terms, urbanization has dissolved much day-to-day discrimination. In a city, nobody knows the caste of the person sitting beside him on a bus or serving him at a restaurant. And Hindu temples no longer bar Dalits from entering.

Yet if the goal was to erase caste divisions in public life, India has failed spectacularly. Flip open a newspaper and you’ll see analysts judging the coming elections less in terms of policies than of caste combinations. In places such as Bihar’s Patna University even dormitories are organized along caste lines—not by the administration, but by students themselves. As the joke goes, Indians don’t cast their votes. They vote their caste.

Differing admission standards also breed resentment among students and diminish the competitiveness of Indian universities. In 2017, to qualify for a master’s in computer technology at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, general applicants needed to score above 745 on an admissions test. For Dalits, the required score was 505.

That same year at Delhi’s prestigious All India Institute for Medical Sciences, the lowest admitted general applicant to study medicine ranked 52nd on a national test. The lowest admitted tribal reservation applicant ranked 4,478th.

India’s quota-riddled universities have fallen steadily behind their Chinese counterparts, which focus brutally on test scores. The QS World University rankings place six Chinese or Hong Kong universities among the world’s top 50. The highest-ranked Indian institution, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, ranked No. 162.

Less tangibly, quotas bolster an every-tribe-for-itself cynicism. They shred the ideal of a society where anyone able can succeed regardless of background. Instead of embracing quotas, India should have built an education system that provided good schooling for all children. Successful countries care more about equality of opportunity, and less about jerry-rigging equality of outcomes.



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