One step ahead... but will it work?

Reservation — an alternative proposal from The Hindu

The proposal involves computing scores for `academic merit' and for `social disadvantage' and then combining the two for admission to higher educational institutions. Since the academic evaluation is less controversial, we concentrate here on the evaluation of comparative social disadvantage. We suggest that the social disadvantage score should be divided into its group and individual components. For the group component, we consider disadvantages based on caste and community, gender, and region. These scores must not be decided arbitrarily or merely on the basis of impressions. We suggest that these disadvantages should be calibrated on the basis of available statistics on representation in higher education of different castes/communities and regions, each of these being considered separately for males and females. The required data could come from the National Sample Survey or other available sources. It would be best, of course, if a special national survey were commissioned for this purpose.

Besides group disadvantages, this scheme also takes individual disadvantages into consideration. While a large number of factors determine individual disadvantages (family history, generational depth of literacy, sibling education, economic resources, etc.), we believe there are two robust indicators of individual disadvantage that can be operationally used in the system of admission to public institutions: parental occupation and the type of school where a person passed the high school examination. These two variables allow us to capture the effect of most of the individual disadvantages, including the family's educational history and economic circumstances.