Extension of caste quotas to shake up higher education

A new law extending caste-based quotas in government jobs and education to economically disadvantaged people of dominant castes, approved by India’s parliament this month, will shake up the higher education sector by reserving an additional 10% of seats – or an estimated additional 3.5 million places – for the new category.

The bill, extending affirmative action for the disadvantaged to all caste groups, became law on 12 January. It reserves 10% of places in public and private colleges and universities to the poor among the upper castes, also known as the ‘general category’.

This is on top of the existing reservation, of almost 50% of places under the Indian Constitution, for disadvantaged social groups or categories including the ‘Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes’ that currently apply to publicly funded institutions.

It is significant that the new 10% quota for the poorest will also apply to private institutions – around 70% of colleges and universities – which do not currently apply the existing 50% caste quotas, effectively opening up improved access for the poorest across the entire sector.

According to estimates, up to 3.5 million additional seats overall may have to be created across all universities and colleges, public and private, in order to implement the quota without cutting back on existing groups. Around one million of these would have to be created in the first year of implementation, government sources confirmed.

The 10% of seats are reserved only for a person whose family has a gross annual income below INR800,000 (approximately US$11,000), including income from all sources such as salaries, agriculture, business and professions.

The family is defined as: the person who seeks to benefit from the reservation, the parents, siblings under the age of 18, spouse and children under 18 years of age.

Creation of additional seats

India’s Human Resource Development Minister, Prakash Javadekar, said the new reservations will be applied to all higher education institutions – private and government-funded – from the new academic session starting in July 2019.

“We will create additional seats,” he said, without specifying the number of seats to be added.

India is home to some 50,000 institutions, 70% of them private, catering for more than 35 million students in higher education, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18. Consequently, it is calculated that up to 3.5 million additional seats will be needed if the quotas are fully implemented.

Javadekar said that on 15 January the ministry met with officials from the All India Council for Technical Education, which oversees technical, management and vocational education, including many engineering and IT colleges, and the University Grants Commission, which oversees the university sector.

“The reservation based on economic status will be applicable from the upcoming academic session. Directions will be issued to the educational institutions to include the provision in their prospectus for this year.”

There is as yet little clarity on the exact nature of the process as the ministry has not yet made the details public. But it is understood that the ministry is working out the number of seats needed to accommodate an additional quota, so as not to disturb the current intake.

Central and state government institutions, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and private institutions will have to increase their student intakes.

“We have a rough estimate of the numbers that will go up in centrally-run institutes such as the IITs. Currently, the intake in IITs is 12,000, so it will go up to 15,000,” a ministry official told local media.

“We will give two years to all the institutes to make arrangements for the infrastructure and other facilities to be able to implement the quota properly,” the official added.

An estimated 100,000 seats will have to be created at the undergraduate level at centrally funded universities, ministry sources said.

Alarm in the private sector

While publicly funded institutions will apply the 10% reservation immediately, parliamentarians said a separate bill will be needed to legally enforce the new quota in private institutions.

Some private universities already reserve some seats under the 50% reservation in accordance with laws in particular states, but it is far from widespread. In the Northern state of Haryana, for example, private universities are already required to reserve 10% of their seats for students domiciled in the state and offer some fee concessions.

The new quota has already caused some alarm in the private higher education sector as the 10% quota will have cost implications. The poorest families are often ineligible for student loans as the default rate is high, which means private universities will have to write off the debt from the fees for reserved seats.

Educationist Tariq Zafar said students from economically weaker sections often drop out because they can’t afford the costs of a course. “So scholarships that offer full cover could be a better alternative,” he said.

Private education providers have suggested that the government should compensate them in the case of fee waivers.

Dr RK Chaurasia, registrar of LNCT University, a private institution in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, said: “The reservation is for students belonging to low-income families so it must logically come with a fee waiver. The modalities of implementing such a quota are yet to be worked out and it is not yet clear if the government would provide financial support to private institutions to extend such fee waivers. It has to be decided.”

And administering the quotas could be a headache for institutions. Under the existing 50% reservation, seats for many subjects reserved for ‘backward castes’ often go unfilled as these groups often cannot meet admission requirements even though the minimum marks for admission to reserved seats is typically much lower than those for other seats.

Ministry officials said institutions that are not able to fill their seats under the existing 50% reservation will not need to add extra seats but can adjust the number of reserved seats to accommodate the additional 10%.

Arvind Malviya, who is associated with the private Rabindranath Tagore University, Bhopal, said it would not be appropriate to increase seats by 10% for all courses. “There are many course areas which are less in demand and so the blanket increase could lead to many seats in such courses remaining vacant,” he said.

But the new law could also have wider ramifications for reservations in private institutions.

According to academics, activists and civil society groups, the government is likely to face pressure from disadvantaged social groups to implement the wider 50% quota for them in private institutions as well if the new 10% quota is extended by law to private higher education.

A civil society organisation, Youth For Equality, and its president Kaushal Kant Mishra, a surgeon, have gone to the Supreme Court contending that the 10% reservation law should be quashed as the economic criterion could not be the sole basis for reservation.

The plea said the law violates the constitution as reservation on economic grounds cannot be limited to the general caste categories and the current 50% ceiling limit for backward castes under the constitution cannot be breached. The court is yet to start hearing the plea.