The reason caste has been made the only issue by our fossilised and intellectually backward minister for human resource development is because he seeks to divert attention from his total failure to improve higher education. He knows that our colleges and universities are dying for want of funds. He knows that fees need to be raised and that private money and a system of endowments is necessary if these institutions are to be saved from certain death, but he does nothing because he is a politician of the old school.

Politicians like him thrive in an atmosphere of control and patronage and they have seen their powers slip away as state controls have been weakened with the end of the license-quota raj. So he clings to one of the last bastions where this political philosophy continues to flourish — education.

And because the debate has got stuck on whether other backward caste students should be entitled to 27 per cent reserved seats in state-run colleges, we do not ask the more important questions. Why is there a shortage of colleges in the first place? Why do we not have a thousand more medical schools? Why do we not have thousands more IITs and IIMs? Why is the private sector not allowed to invest in building them if the state does not have the money? Why is there a single AICTE to regulate every technical college in the country?

If there were enough colleges, we would not be discussing caste quotas and the Supreme Court would not need to waste its time questioning the basis of a caste census done in 1931. What is the government going to do now? Will it be able to conduct a new caste based census by August, when it has to report back to the Supreme Court?

... contd.