Job quotas confusion leaves thousands of posts empty

Thousands of university faculty jobs in India remain unfilled over competing interpretations of the country’s constitutional guarantee of job quotas in higher education institutions for lower castes and marginalised groups.

Protests have broken out around the country in recent weeks over the implementation of the rules, a situation the government says is affecting the quality of higher education.

The Indian government was forced to back down over its formula for affirmative action in university faculty jobs after its policy of university-wide caste quotas was struck down by a high court order backed by a Supreme Court of India ruling last month.

The court ruled that the government must reinstate faculty job quotas for lower castes department by department in each university.

Roster system

Job reservations for marginalised groups in universities and colleges, guaranteed in India’s constitution at 49.5% of government jobs, is implemented through a roster system. In the old ‘200-point roster’ system, all departments in an institution are clubbed together to arrive at the number of reserved positions based on total staff numbers.

This system guarantees reserved posts for all the reserved categories – ‘scheduled castes’ (SCs), ‘scheduled tribes’ (STs) and ‘other backward classes’ (OBCs) – even in small departments with fewer than four faculty positions. It ensured that of every 200 posts, 99 were reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs – 49.5% of government jobs – in one department or the other. A deficit in one department was made up in others.

But in April 2017 the Allahabad High Court ordered that the 200-point roster or university-based system be replaced with department-based reservations by backing the argument that the university-based system led to some departments having all jobs reserved while other departments had none.

It replaced it with the so-called ‘13-point roster’ system whereby in each department one out of 13 faculty posts is reserved – in fact a reduction in the number of reserved faculty jobs as most departments in universities have fewer than 13 faculty members.

The higher education regulatory body, the University Grants Commission, directed all universities and colleges in March 2018 to implement the reservation policy by treating the department as a unit rather than the university or college.

Hiring virtually frozen

But hiring was virtually frozen while the government appealed against the ruling in the Supreme Court. Some 5,000 vacancies in universities across the country have not been filled because of the legal confusion, the government said, promising to reinstate the university-wide system.

“The government stands for societal justice, it favours the 200-point roster [system],” Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

But on 22 January the apex court upheld the high court order. The Supreme Court said that since teaching posts in different departments were not interchangeable, the university cannot be treated as a unit while reserving posts.

The prospect of a permanent roll-out of the department-based system sparked widespread nationwide protests in recent weeks as thousands of students, teachers, political figures, lower caste Dalits and tribal activists, among others, demanded a new law or ordinance to overturn the Supreme Court order, arguing the department-wise system would drastically reduce the number of teachers from marginal groups in universities.

According to a report submitted by Banaras Hindu University to the Human Resource Development Ministry last year, if the university were to use the department-based 13-point roster, caste-reserved faculty posts would be reduced by half, tribal reservations reduced by almost 80%, and those for teachers from other marginalised groups (OBCs) by 30%.

The former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association, Sonajharia Minz, said the department-by-department system “is unconstitutional. They are meant to represent the deprived sections in order to be part of the mainstream,” he said, but the court decisions meant the roster system had become “a mechanism to exclude [those] who were meant to be included”.

During a debate in New Delhi in February organised by the Naga Scholars Association, the association’s president, Zuchamo Yanthan, said if the department-by-department system was implemented, groups such as the Naga people, a tribe in the North Eastern Indian state of Nagaland, would never find jobs in universities in India, “which is quite alarming”.

Cabinet ordinance

On 7 March, in its last sitting before national elections next month, the cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an ordinance to revert to the university-wide system, in response to the protests.

An official press release said: “This decision is expected to improve the teaching standards in the higher educational institutions to attract all eligible talented candidates.

“This decision will allow the filling up of more than 5,000 vacancies by direct recruitment in teachers' cadre, duly ensuring that the constitutional provisions shall be complied with, and stipulated reservation criteria for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes are met with.”

The swift announcement of an ordinance is seen as important to the government’s bid to woo marginalised groups in the upcoming election. This has been a particularly sensitive issue as it touches on the emotive issues of caste politics, university access and jobs.

Officials denied it was an election manoeuvre, however, saying the government’s hands had been tied while the Supreme Court was considering the case.

Bhuvnesh Patel, of the Anusuchit Jati Janjati Adhikari evam Karamchari Sangh (AJJAKS), representing marginalised groups including sanitation workers, said: “This decision ensures the marginalised communities get suitable representation.”

Patel explained: “Most departments have three or four or maybe five faculty posts, and in these cases, hardly anyone from deprived groups could get the seat that they were due under the new formula.”