For instance, there are some well designed deprivation indices that give precise weight to different kinds of deprivation. These indices are both better at targeting deserving beneficiaries and picking out qualified students. Why is it that in a country the size of India different institutions not be allowed to experiment with different forms of affirmative action?

What is most disquieting about the current debate over reservations is that it so vividly exemplifies the failings of our education policy. There is no room for freedom of institutions. Without freedom there can be no genuine diversity, creativity and innovation, even in matters of social justice. In this debate there is a profound anti-intellectualism that has no room for nuance and fine distinctions: even ministers and journalists are routinely getting the meaning of the recently passed constitutional amendment wrong.

In this debate there is such an overbearing recourse to statism, as if government diktat can produce quality institutions or social justice. But it reveals two reasons why our Higher Education is worse than it should be.

First, this sector is subject to more homilies and piety than analytical clarity; it is made to bear the weight of all aspirations: politics, social justice, state ideology; all aspirations except pedagogical ones.

Secondly, this is one sector where everyone distrusts everyone else: regulators distrust institutions, who in turn distrust administrators, who in turn distrust teachers, who in turn could not care less for students, who in turn are cheated by the system, to the point where society comes to distrust the sector as whole. No sector can excel if its foundations lie in distrust.

... contd.