The Moily Oversight Committee, entrusted with coming up with a strategy to implement the proposed OBC quotas in Central institutions, had a thankless task: to come up with a plan to expand current institutional strength by almost 30 per cent within two-three years. In the context of Israel’s recent actions in Lebanon, a British diplomat is reported to have said,”If you redouble your efforts after an error, chances are you will square the error.” While the final report is not yet out, there are some interesting silences in the interim report and it looks increasingly likely we will indeed square the error as far as institutions of higher learning go. While the committee stresses achieving expansion in a way that is compatible with excellence, in the end the only prop it has for quality enhancement is the obscure hope Hegel once articulated: quantity can mysteriously turn into quality.

There are some crucial ambiguities in the interim reports which might have a decisive impact on how OBC quotas will be implemented. For one, current thinking appears to be that the final cut-offs for eligibility be left to the institutions themselves. A lot will turn on how much leeway institutions have in this matter. If the cut-off is kept high you might have a pipeline problem, in terms of finding the number of eligible candidates. On the other hand, if the quotas are filled even with high cut-offs, then the argument for reservations actually becomes redundant. Either way reservation as a targeted policy fails. The third possibility, as has happened earlier, is a race to the bottom and we do not have any assurance that this won’t indeed happen.

... contd.