From: sankar@bank.ecn.purdue.edu (Mahalingam Sankararaman)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Subject: Reservation
Date: 22 Aug 92 19:02:30 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network


              Effect of Quotas on Standards

	               Nupur Basu

	              India Abroad 

	             August 21, 1992
	       


Quotas in colleges for students and teachers based on
caste have vitiated education, according to the
academician and social anthropologist M. N. Srinivas.

Srinivas, chairman of the Institute of Social and
Economic Change in Bangalore, said that quotas had struck
a serious blow to considerations of merit, and had made
the higher education indiscriminate.

"This has meant a tremendous strain on the higher
education system and has resulted in the obvious
deterioration of standards" Srinivas a corresponding
fellow of the British Academy, said in an interview.

		 South As Example

Citing as an example, the southern states, which he said
had a high degree of quotas, he maintained that less than
30 percent of university students were selected on merit
and nearly 70 percent on non-merit considerations.

"The universities have been vitiated with caste fights,
and this has resulted in deep frustration among the
meritorious" he said.

Factionalism among different caste groups, malpractices
in examinations and violence against teaching community
have been some of the adverse fallouts of this kind of
reservation, he added.

Not content with the reservation of seats for students,
the government has also adopted the practice of
recruitment and promotion of teaching faculty based on
caste considerations, he said.

"There have been cases where the teaching posts have had
to go vacant because no suitable candidate was available
from the scheduled castes (social underclass)," he said.

"Whose interests are you protecting when you act in this
manner? All this has happened due to political presures
on the education system, and what we are left with is the
resultant mess."

The system has failed to cope with the numbers demanding
educational opportunities, Srinivas asserted.

         	      Unable to Cope

"The bulk of people outside the education system who are
knocking on the doors of the education institutions is
phenomenal," he went on. "All this happened all too
suddenly, and the system has failed to cope with the
education that has undergone a change.

"Earlier, the aim of education was to enlarge one's
intellectual frontiers. Today it is to secure a job and
improve one's social status," he observed.

The sorry state of the universities he said, must be
viewed in the social and political context of the county,
as education is closely linked to other aspects of
society and culture, such as politics and economics.

The corruption permeating society has not spread the education
sphere, he warned, adding, "universities have become
local fiefdoms and only reflect the politics of the wider
society."

"While political interference has undermined the autonomy
of universities, the University Grants Commission, the
umbrella organization created by the government to fund
and monitor the universities, has become a bureaucratic
monster," he added.

"Things have come to such a state that vice chancellers
have to lobby ministers for appointments. How can you
expect anything but a lowering of standards, given these
factors?"

Srinivas faulted what he called the government's lopsided
policies in giving more importances to higher than to
elementary education.

"The maldistribution of funding has resulted in the
nonachievemnt of universal primary education and
universal literacy, both of which were constitutional
obligations," he charged.

According to him, primary education is a "dark area,"
like illiteracy, and he held government policies and
politicians responsible for it.

Unless primary education becomes a national priority, he
warned India will continue to have the largest number of
illiterates and child laborers in the world.

	       For Technical Training

Stressing the need for employment oriented education after
the middle level, Srinivas said that most of the populace
should receive training in polytechniques rather than
blindly go into degree courses, which he said had given
rise to a generation of youngsters looking for
white-collar jobs.

"Higher education is an expansive affair and it should be
open only to the really merited and dedicated," he
maintained.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil