The Supreme Court judgment staying the government’s order imposing 27 per cent reservation in central universities may be seen as a triumph of those opposed to caste-based reservation. More accurately, it is a defeat for cynical politicians who tried to replace an essential service by unwarranted draconian regulation.

For decades, politicians have obfuscated the issue of social inequality by describing it as a caste divide. In truth, the divide is economic: whatever the caste, practically no family that can afford to send children to colleges fails to do so. Not merely the well-to-do, even the poor, have given up on government schools. In Chennai, which has had the longest and the most extensive system of caste-based reservation, municipal and government schools are not getting enough students although they offer education free and the population has increased ten-fold. Those schools do not get children, as they have virtually stopped teaching. It is at the school level that the rot starts.

Most elderly people who are at the top of their professions today were educated in pre-Independence days in state-run schools. Government schools of pre-Independence India produced a Kalam and a Manmohan Singh. Such a prospect for really poor children reaching top positions is now all but ruled out. By running down state-run schools, our politicians have seen to it that the poor have no chance of success. Suppose our politicians had run their schools better and ensured good education to all, including the poor and even then lower castes had not done well, there would have been force in their plea for caste-based reservation.

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