Primary inequality

The Ganguly Committee has devised a point system that private schools must follow. There has been much debate over the points given to the “neighbourhood” criterion (20 if the child lives within a radius of 3 km, nil if above 10 km) and much applause for the gender-sensitive five points for a girl child and equally for the five points allotted to ‘any child with special needs.’

But the other criteria have evoked little comment, leave alone outrage. If the child seeking admission has a sibling in the same school, he or she gets 20 points. Another five points each for a father and mother who happen to be alumni. And 10 whole points if the father is a postgraduate — double that if the mother is also an MA. The points decrease with the declining educational qualifications of the parents — only four points for matriculates and, one assumes, no admission at all if either are illiterate.

In the fiercely competitive world of admissions into the city’s elite public schools, the Ganguly Commission’s ostensible aim is to reduce the discretionary powers of school administrations that tend to favour the wards of the well-heeled and well-connected. But for all its good intentions, the recommendations reveal a deeply elitist and exclusionary bias that has important implications in the contentious reservations debate.

First, it unequivocally confirms the long-held belief of pro-reservationists that there is no such thing as a “level playing field” in India and that inequities are embedded in the system from the very beginning. When V.P. Singh implemented the Mandal Commission report in 1990, critics said there was no point reserving jobs without ensuring that the OBCs were adequately educated. The government’s latest decision to reserve seats in educational institutions has met with a similar outcry: there should be equality at the starting point of the school system, not at the university level.

But the Ganguly Commission report brings out in the open the reservation system that operates at the lowest echelon of the education system. Given the prohibitive fees charged by most public schools, a “weeding out” process is already at work from the outset. This process of unnatural selection has now been given a further twist. By awarding points on the basis of parental qualifications and sibling and alumni criteria, inherent privileges of birth — the essence of the caste system — are officially given precedence over those with equal money but inferior pedigree.

Second, it reinforces the argument of the political class that only state-enforced quotas can redress age-old inequalities because the cream of Indian society (distinct from the one generation thin OBC creamy layer) is even more unwilling than before to share the spoils of its new prosperity.

The Nehruvian elite at least gave lip service to the egalitarian ideal. They may have wanted the best for their children but they also believed that an unlettered maidservant’s son should get the same chances — at least on paper — as their own; that a father’s lack of college education should not come in the way of his hopes for a better future for his daughter. The lack of protests over the new criteria shows that we do not care for such niceties, even in theory, anymore.

Third, it shows that despite all the celebration of India’s diversity and pluralism, the instinct for a certain kind of uniformity — in our classrooms and our workplaces — remains intact. Children from a similar socio-economic background, or “people like us” are preferred to the unwashed unknown. In another time, a first-generation learner would have got extra points at the time of admission. But now, we leave it to the ill-equipped municipal schools to take up that awesome challenge; private schools are meant to manufacture merit that comes from impeccable antecedents.

And fourth, stemming from all of the above, it provides impetus to the argument that despite sixty years of democracy, the stranglehold of the upper castes (except in politics or where reservations have worked) has not slackened significantly. This contention is certain to raise the hackles of the middle class because most of us genuinely believe that caste means nothing to us; it is a remnant of the past that politicians keep alive for the sake of votebanks. The Ganguly Committee report, after all, asked for a mother’s college degree, not her caste certificate. And if it had, we would have been outraged.

In order to get the real picture, it is time perhaps for the government to set up a commission on the lines of the Mandal Commission or the Sachar Committee — but this time a Forward Castes Commission to establish the numerical strength of the forward castes in India and their levels of representation in various arenas of society and economy.

If the results prove that the upper castes do exercise dominance and control far disproportionate to their numbers, a sense of fair play as well as self-interest would demand that we become more inclusive and open — starting with nursery school admissions. Otherwise, the logic of democracy aka vote-banks will find methods as crude as the 100-point system to break the barricades of privilege and exclusivity.