The US experience shows that rather than Mandal II, Indian education needs to offer nuanced admission policies and support for disadvantaged students

Many countries around the world have introduced policies of positive discrimination in an effort to reduce historically persistent lags in the social, political and economic standing of disadvantaged communities. Positive discrimination (PD) can be defined as the provision of some amount of preference, in processes of selection to desirable positions in a society, to members of groups that are under-represented in those positions. The preference may be provided in various forms — reserved seats in separate competitions, or preferential boosts in a single competition; but it always has the effect of increasing the number of members of an eligible under-represented group selected to a desirable position.1

PD policies should be understood not as a frontal assault on severe socioeconomic inequalities, but primarily as an effort to integrate the upper strata of a society — by increasing the access of members of highly disadvantaged and under-represented communities to respected occupations and responsible positions. This kind of integration of society’s elite helps to promote a variety of benefits, including: greater legitimacy of the political system; better performance of jobs involving familiarity with and understanding of disadvantaged communities; fairer access by ordinary members of those communities to resources and to jobs; and greater motivation for youths from such communities to work hard to better their future prospects.

In India positive discrimination has from the beginning taken the form of reservations, ie, quotas of reserved seats or positions to which eligible candidates can gain access without competing with candidates from non-eligible groups. The size of the quotas are set according to the proportion of the eligible group in the relevant overall population; but quotas for the most desirable positions are usually only partially filled, because an insufficient number of eligible candidates meet the minimum qualifications set for such positions.

In this paper I will focus on reservations in admissions to Indian higher educational institutions, which have recently become the subject of much public debate in the context of proposals to extend to ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs) reserved seats in elite national institutes. In past work I have surveyed and compiled much of the available empirical evidence on the consequences of reservations in Indian higher education. Here I will summarise that evidence and then discuss its implications for the present debate. Before doing so, however, it will be useful to address some theoretical issues in the analysis of PD admission policies.

Theoretical considerations

Because there are both potential benefits and potential costs associated with positive discrimination, I believe that evaluation of the consequences of a PD policy should best proceed within a benefit-cost framework. It follows from this understanding that the way in which a PD policy is structured and implemented can be crucial to its effectiveness — and thus to whether or not it generates net benefits.

The overall success of a PD policy depends on a variety of factors; but one is particularly important. The net benefits of any PD policy are significantly and positively correlated with the (average) quality of performance by beneficiaries in the institutions or organisations to which they gain preferential access. Good beneficiary performance strengthens the magnitude of anticipated benefits, and it weakens the magnitude of potential costs.

In the case of positive discrimination in admissions to higher educational institutions, the net benefits of a PD policy hinge on the number of beneficiaries who have a successful educational experience —e.g., they complete the degree program — as compared with the number of beneficiaries who are unsuccessful. A PD policy in educational admissions provides for the admission of applicants from disadvantaged groups who have weaker conventional qualifications than is required for admission of applicants from other groups. One hopes in this way to select applicants from PD-eligible groups who are formally under-qualified, but nonetheless have the potential to succeed in a higher educational institution, while avoiding the selection of those who would be incapable of overcoming their weaker formal qualifications.

The key elements of a PD admissions policy that affect the accuracy of the selection process (in the above sense) are the following: the magnitude of the preference given to members of beneficiary groups, the sensitivity of the admissions process and the extent of support for PD beneficiaries by the educational institution into which they are admitted. I will discuss each of these briefly in turn.

Magnitude of preference

The preference magnitude involved in any given PD policy is easy to measure for admissions procedures that are quantitative, in the sense that applicants’ qualifications are summarized in an overall point score. In the case of a reserved quota system, the preference magnitude is the difference between the point score of the marginal applicant selected in the general competition and that of the marginal applicant selected in the reserved competition (whether or not the quota is filled). In the case of a quantitative preferential-boost system, it is simply the number of additional points granted to beneficiary group members. When an affirmative action selection procedure is qualitative, involving consideration of a variety of qualifications that are not scored and aggregated into a single overall point score for each applicant, the average amount of preference extended to affirmative action beneficiaries is implicit in the process and much harder — but not impossible — to estimate.

The preference magnitude is especially important, because ceteris paribus the benefits and costs of a PD policy will vary systematically with this magnitude, as follows:

• the larger the magnitude, the greater the number of beneficiaries admitted, hence the less frequent the instances of failure to admit a successful candidate;

• but the larger the magnitude, the greater the percentage of beneficiaries who will be unsuccessful, hence the more frequent the instances of admission of an unsuccessful candidate.

There must be some (positive) level of the preference magnitude at which the costs associated with admitting unsuccessful candidates will start to exceed the benefits associated with admitting successful ones.

In principle, with full information about the consequences of different preference magnitudes, one could estimate both the number of PD beneficiaries and the overall net benefits associated with each preference magnitude. For any given under-represented group the net benefits from PD would presumably rise initially, as the magnitude of the preference was raised from zero, because at low magnitudes PD beneficiaries could be expected to perform about as well as other marginal applicants. After a certain point, however, the additional net benefits from a higher preference magnitude would turn negative because, at ever higher magnitudes, an ever smaller proportion of additional PD beneficiaries admitted would be able to perform well.2 The magnitude of the preference at that turning point could therefore be identified as the optimal one, which maximises the expected net benefits from a PD policy favouring the given group.

In practice, of course, decision-makers will never have access to sufficient information to determine optimal preference magnitudes in such a systematic and precise manner. Instead, they will have to mix available information with educated guesses and rely on their own best judgment to determine the magnitude of preference appropriate for a group deemed PD-eligible.

Sensitivity of the selection process

PD policies can vary greatly with respect to the sensitivity — as opposed to the rigidity — of the process whereby applicants are preferentially selected. The most rigid, mechanical type of PD admissions process involves a quantitative procedure in which all applicants take some kind of standardised test and are ranked simply by scores on that test. A somewhat less rigid selection process would take account of several different qualification criteria, not just a test score; this kind of process might assign scores on each criterion to every applicant and then aggregate every applicant’s scores into a composite quantitative index for purposes of ranking.

As an admissions process becomes progressively more sensitive the greater is the variety as well as the number of criteria involved in ranking applicants. Even more important, as an admissions process becomes more sensitive the more the process of evaluating an applicant’s standing with respect to relevant criteria is qualitative rather than quantitative, involving considered judgment by admissions personnel rather than mechanically determined scores fed into a composite index. A highly sensitive and nuanced PD admissions process would not only include qualitative evaluation of the extent to which a beneficiary group applicant satisfies various relevant criteria, but also treat disadvantaged group status as a signal to look especially hard for evidence of additional applicant characteristics suggesting a strong potential for good performance. Sensitive selection processes are, to be sure, harder and more costly to administer than rigid ones, since they require that more information of various kinds be gathered from applicants and that more people be employed to implement the selection process. The extent to which a PD admissions process can be made sensitive therefore depends on the availability of resources to finance the process; and the costs of raising such resources must be weighed against the benefits expected.

Support for under-prepared beneficiaries

Whether a PD beneficiary is able to meet the challenges of the position to which PD has provided access is likely to depend significantly and positively on the extent to which support is made available after the person is selected. There are several kinds of support that can be helpful for PD beneficiaries in an educational institution. These include both human resources, such as constructive attitudes and mentoring on the part of faculty, and financial resources made available for programs and activities that help PD beneficiaries adjust to their new settings and function effectively in them.


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The fact that Dalits and Adivasis are now somewhat less under-represented in India’s elite positions than in the past has surely strengthened the legitimacy, and thereby arguably also the effectiveness, of India’s democratic political system

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Just as it takes resources to improve the sensitivity of admissions processes, so it takes resources to provide developmental support for under-prepared beneficiaries. Decisions about how much to invest in support of PD beneficiaries will therefore have a significant impact on the overall net benefits of the PD policies. Resources are always limited and the payoffs to this kind of investment are not always obvious – nor are they all captured by the investors. Hence there will probably be need for subsidies to encourage institutions practicing PD to make sufficient investments of this kind.3

Indian realities

I have elsewhere reviewed systematically the available empirical evidence on the consequences of India’s reservation policies in admissions to higher educational institutions.4 The evidence is regrettably limited in scope, particularly regarding long-term consequences; and it is confined largely to Dalits and Adivasis. Yet over the last three decades there has been a slow accretion of relevant studies, which have shed a good deal of light on the benefits and costs of India’s positive discrimination over the past half-century in the sphere of higher education. Here I will summarise the most important findings of my review of the evidence.

Benefits of reservation

I have found that the main benefits resulting from India’s PD policies for higher educational admissions are the following — in order of likely significance.

1. Greater integration of Dalits and Adivasis into India’s elite professions

Over the past several decades India has witnessed a marked increase — from an extremely low base — in the extent to which Dalits (especially) and Adivasis (to a lesser degree) have been integrated into the educated elite of Indian society. This increase cannot be attributed solely to PD policies in higher educational admissions; but positive discrimination in this sphere has played an indispensable role in the process. PD policies in India’s most prestigious educational institutions — the national-level institutes and the most highly-regarded professional schools — have substantially increased admissions of Dalit and Adivasi applicants, who would otherwise hardly be represented at all; and most of these PD beneficiaries have done well enough to graduate. Studies from the relatively elite institutions suggest that most Dalit and Adivasi students who do graduate end up in responsible and well-paying positions, although they do not fare quite as well as do their non-beneficiary peers.

The fact that Dalits and Adivasis are now somewhat less under-represented in India’s elite positions than in the past has surely strengthened the legitimacy, and thereby arguably also the effectiveness, of India’s democratic political system. PD policies have also contributed in a number of other ways to the strengthening of Indian society. Scattered evidence suggests that Dalit and Adivasi graduates are less likely than other graduates to pursue purely materialistic goals, more likely to make service contributions to the wider society, and more likely to pursue careers in a way in which they can be helpful to members of communities in need.

2. More even spread of social capital

The history of India has left Dalits and Adivasis significantly lagging not only in financial capital, physical capital and human capital (individual education and skills), but also significantly in social capital (useful contacts and networks that improve one’s career opportunities). Educational institutions enable individuals to accumulate human capital; but higher educational institutions are particularly important in enabling individuals to acquire social capital. Greater numbers of Dalit and Adivasi members succeeding in higher educational institutions — especially elite ones — means a more equal distribution of social capital across groups in India, which promotes societal efficiency in that it provides greater opportunity for people to advance on the basis of their abilities and skills as opposed to their power and connections.


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It is often claimed in favour of PD policies that they serve a progressive redistributional function, steering resources and opportunities away from the well-to-do and toward poorer
individuals and families. In one important respect this claim
is refuted by data from India

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The evidence shows that beneficiaries of Indian PD policies graduate from higher educational institutions at somewhat lower rates than their peers; but the more selective the school, the smaller is this differential. Little systematic research has been done on the extent of the career boost resulting from attending a relatively selective higher educational institution. The intense competition for entry into prestigious higher educational institutions, however, leaves no doubt that the boost is significant —and it is likely to be especially so for students, like Dalits and Adivasis, who are otherwise limited in their social capital endowment.

3. Improved motivation of Dalit and Adivasi students

There is no systematic evidence bearing directly on how India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions affect the motivation of Dalit and Adivasi youths to develop their human capital. But there is some anecdotal evidence that PD policies have a positive motivational effect; and there is also a strong a priori case for such an effect — in spite of claims by PD critics that it encourages potential beneficiaries to slack off.5

4. Redistribution: mixed outcomes

It is often claimed in favour of PD policies that they serve a progressive redistributional function, steering resources and opportunities away from the well-to-do and toward poorer individuals and families. In one important respect this claim is refuted by data from India. There is much evidence that the vast majority of the direct beneficiaries of India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions come from ‘creamy layers’ (ie, the best-off segments) of the Dalit and Adivasi communities. Moreover, direct beneficiaries come disproportionately from the better-off Dalit castes and Adivasi tribes. Thus India’s educational reservations serve to increase inequalities within the Dalit and Adivasi communities — at least insofar as the direct benefits are concerned.

In another respect, however, India’s PD admission policies have probably been favourable to progressive redistribution. The available evidence suggests that the average socioeconomic status of the families of Dalit and Adivasi students is far below that of the families of other students. Most of the beneficiaries of reserved seats in Indian higher educational institutions are therefore likely to be worse off than the marginal general-entry applicants who are displaced by reservations. It follows that IndiaPD policies in higher educational admissions most probably reduce inequalities between Dalits and Adivasis and members of other communities.

Sensitivity of the selection process

PD policies can vary greatly with respect to the sensitivity — as opposed to the rigidity — of the process whereby applicants are preferentially selected. The most rigid, mechanical type of PD admissions process involves a quantitative procedure in which all applicants take some kind of standardised test and are ranked simply by scores on that test. A somewhat less rigid selection process would take account of several different qualification criteria, not just a test score; this kind of process might assign scores on each criterion to every applicant and then aggregate every applicant’s scores into a composite quantitative index for purposes of ranking.

As an admissions process becomes progressively more sensitive the greater is the variety as well as the number of criteria involved in ranking applicants. Even more important, as an admissions process becomes more sensitive the more the process of evaluating an applicant’s standing with respect to relevant criteria is qualitative rather than quantitative, involving considered judgment by admissions personnel rather than mechanically determined scores fed into a composite index. A highly sensitive and nuanced PD admissions process would not only include qualitative evaluation of the extent to which a beneficiary group applicant satisfies various relevant criteria, but also treat disadvantaged group status as a signal to look especially hard for evidence of additional applicant characteristics suggesting a strong potential for good performance. Sensitive selection processes are, to be sure, harder and more costly to administer than rigid ones, since they require that more information of various kinds be gathered from applicants and that more people be employed to implement the selection process. The extent to which a PD admissions process can be made sensitive therefore depends on the availability of resources to finance the process; and the costs of raising such resources must be weighed against the benefits expected.

Support for under-prepared beneficiaries

Whether a PD beneficiary is able to meet the challenges of the position to which PD has provided access is likely to depend significantly and positively on the extent to which support is made available after the person is selected. There are several kinds of support that can be helpful for PD beneficiaries in an educational institution. These include both human resources, such as constructive attitudes and mentoring on the part of faculty, and financial resources made available for programs and activities that help PD beneficiaries adjust to their new settings and function effectively in them.



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Over the past several decades India has witnessed a marked increase — from an extremely low base — in the extent to which Dalits (especially) and Adivasis (to a lesser degree) have been integrated into the educated elite of Indian society. This increase cannot be attributed solely to PD policies in higher educational admissions; but positive discrimination in this sphere has played an indispensable role in the process

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Just as it takes resources to improve the sensitivity of admissions processes, so it takes resources to provide developmental support for under-prepared beneficiaries. Decisions about how much to invest in support of PD beneficiaries will therefore have a significant impact on the overall net benefits of the PD policies. Resources are always limited and the payoffs to this kind of investment are not always obvious – nor are they all captured by the investors. Hence there will probably be need for subsidies to encourage institutions practicing PD to make sufficient investments of this kind.3

Indian realities

I have elsewhere reviewed systematically the available empirical evidence on the consequences of India’s reservation policies in admissions to higher educational institutions.4 The evidence is regrettably limited in scope, particularly regarding long-term consequences; and it is confined largely to Dalits and Adivasis. Yet over the last three decades there has been a slow accretion of relevant studies, which have shed a good deal of light on the benefits and costs of India’s positive discrimination over the past half-century in the sphere of higher education. Here I will summarise the most important findings of my review of the evidence.

Benefits of reservation

I have found that the main benefits resulting from India’s PD policies for higher educational admissions are the following — in order of likely significance.

1. Greater integration of Dalits and Adivasis into India’s elite professions

Over the past several decades India has witnessed a marked increase — from an extremely low base — in the extent to which Dalits (especially) and Adivasis (to a lesser degree) have been integrated into the educated elite of Indian society. This increase cannot be attributed solely to PD policies in higher educational admissions; but positive discrimination in this sphere has played an indispensable role in the process. PD policies in India’s most prestigious educational institutions — the national-level institutes and the most highly-regarded professional schools — have substantially increased admissions of Dalit and Adivasi applicants, who would otherwise hardly be represented at all; and most of these PD beneficiaries have done well enough to graduate. Studies from the relatively elite institutions suggest that most Dalit and Adivasi students who do graduate end up in responsible and well-paying positions, although they do not fare quite as well as do their non-beneficiary peers.

The fact that Dalits and Adivasis are now somewhat less under-represented in India’s elite positions than in the past has surely strengthened the legitimacy, and thereby arguably also the effectiveness, of India’s democratic political system. PD policies have also contributed in a number of other ways to the strengthening of Indian society. Scattered evidence suggests that Dalit and Adivasi graduates are less likely than other graduates to pursue purely materialistic goals, more likely to make service contributions to the wider society, and more likely to pursue careers in a way in which they can be helpful to members of communities in need.

2. More even spread of social capital

The history of India has left Dalits and Adivasis significantly lagging not only in financial capital, physical capital and human capital (individual education and skills), but also significantly in social capital (useful contacts and networks that improve one’s career opportunities). Educational institutions enable individuals to accumulate human capital; but higher educational institutions are particularly important in enabling individuals to acquire social capital. Greater numbers of Dalit and Adivasi members succeeding in higher educational institutions — especially elite ones — means a more equal distribution of social capital across groups in India, which promotes societal efficiency in that it provides greater opportunity for people to advance on the basis of their abilities and skills as opposed to their power and connections.

The evidence shows that beneficiaries of Indian PD policies graduate from higher educational institutions at somewhat lower rates than their peers; but the more selective the school, the smaller is this differential. Little systematic research has been done on the extent of the career boost resulting from attending a relatively selective higher educational institution. The intense competition for entry into prestigious higher educational institutions, however, leaves no doubt that the boost is significant —and it is likely to be especially so for students, like Dalits and Adivasis, who are otherwise limited in their social capital endowment.

3. Improved motivation of Dalit and Adivasi students

There is no systematic evidence bearing directly on how India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions affect the motivation of Dalit and Adivasi youths to develop their human capital. But there is some anecdotal evidence that PD policies have a positive motivational effect; and there is also a strong a priori case for such an effect — in spite of claims by PD critics that it encourages potential beneficiaries to slack off.5

4. Redistribution: mixed outcomes

It is often claimed in favour of PD policies that they serve a progressive redistributional function, steering resources and opportunities away from the well-to-do and toward poorer individuals and families. In one important respect this claim is refuted by data from India. There is much evidence that the vast majority of the direct beneficiaries of India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions come from ‘creamy layers’ (ie, the best-off segments) of the Dalit and Adivasi communities. Moreover, direct beneficiaries come disproportionately from the better-off Dalit castes and Adivasi tribes. Thus India’s educational reservations serve to increase inequalities within the Dalit and Adivasi communities — at least insofar as the direct benefits are concerned.

In another respect, however, India’s PD admission policies have probably been favourable to progressive redistribution. The available evidence suggests that the average socioeconomic status of the families of Dalit and Adivasi students is far below that of the families of other students. Most of the beneficiaries of reserved seats in Indian higher educational institutions are therefore likely to be worse off than the marginal general-entry applicants who are displaced by reservations. It follows that IndiaPD policies in higher educational admissions most probably reduce inequalities between Dalits and Adivasis and members of other communities.

Costs of reservation

I have found that the main costs resulting from independent India’s PD policies for higher educational admissions are the following — presented also in order of likely significance.

1. Exacerbation of caste and ethnic divisions

India’s PD policies in all spheres — not just in higher educational admissions — focus attention on caste and ethnicity and thereby increase consciousness of peoples’ group identity. This has surely contributed in some measure to the growth of divisive identity group politics, a much-decried feature of India’s political history over the past several decades. To be sure, one cannot plausibly attribute to PD policies a primary role in generating such divisiveness, given the long and sorry history of caste and other communal divisions in India.

PD policies in higher educational admissions are something of a lightning rod, for they spotlight inter-group competition for highly valued access to elite educational institutions. This has no doubt led to growth in resentment against beneficiary groups by more advantaged groups, whose members have traditionally enjoyed predominant access to such institutions. Such resentment is often unjustified and attributable largely to political manipulation, but it has nonetheless aggravated inter-group conflict.

Moreover, the history of India’s reservation policies shows that competitive demands for group preferences have had a strong tendency to snowball, both in terms of making additional groups eligible for reserved seats and in terms of extending the scope of reservations to new spheres, in ways that are increasingly unlikely to be beneficial (more on this below).

2. Relatively poor academic performance

The available evidence shows clearly that the average academic performance of Dalit and Adivasi students is distinctly worse than that of other students, and that their graduation rates are considerably lower.6 It is important to note, however, that the differentials in academic performance and graduation rates for Dalit and Adivasi students, as compared with those of their peers, is not as great in elite higher educational institutions as it is in less elite schools, and that graduation rate differentials have been declining over time.

Furthermore, there is evidence that the gap in performance between Dalit and Adivasi students and their peers is considerably less in post-university career achievements than it is in within-university academic performance (as conventionally measured by one’s grade-point average). The same is surely true as between PD beneficiaries and the applicants displaced by PD. This suggests that a more comprehensive measure of performance than GPA would show less evidence of ‘underperformance’ by PD beneficiaries.7

3. Devaluation of accomplishments

The evidence does show that many Dalit and Adivasi students are stigmatised by the presumption that their enrolment in a higher educational institution is due to preferential admission policies and not solely to their own qualifications. This is usually true, insofar as qualifications are measured by test scores. Since those applicants who can afford it routinely boost their test scores by attending high-quality secondary schools and by engaging test tutors or taking private test-preparation courses, a truer measure of applicant qualifications might well identify more applicants from disadvantaged groups — and fewer applicants from advantaged groups — as being qualified for higher education without any preference. Nonetheless, it is true that a substantial proportion of Dalits and Adivasis enter higher educational institutions less academically qualified — by any standard — than the majority of their peers.

The resulting stigmatisation of Dalits and Adivasis as beneficiaries of PD preference has several negative consequences: (a) their real capabilities and accomplishments will be under-appreciated, particularly if they do not in fact owe their admission to PD; (b) at selective higher educational institutions some people will complain that Dalit and Adivasi students, presumed to be PD beneficiaries, do not belong on campus; and (c) faculty may disserve Dalit and Adivasi students by holding low expectations and patronising them. It is impossible to determine the extent to which such views and actions are attributable to PD policies, rather than to a general predilection toward negative stereotyping of Dalit and Adivasi students; but it is most likely that the first set of factors do play some role — and this must be counted as a cost of PD policies in higher educational admissions.

4. (Not!) Rendering PD beneficiaries worse off

The available evidence does not support the claim, made by some critics of PD, that reservations for Dalit and Adivasi students in Indian higher educational institutions in India actually cause a counter-productive mismatch of those students with excessively challenging educational environments, so that they end up worse off than if they had not had access to them. Evidence from elite institutions suggests that Dalit and Adivasi students graduate at reasonable rates (though their academic performance is most often inferior to that of their peers), and that most of them go on to successful careers. Since a degree from an elite institution carries much greater promise of a good career than a degree from a run-of-the-mill school, beneficiaries of India’s PD policies in higher education are surely better off in the former. It is not so clear that PD beneficiaries benefit from attending one of India’s many mediocre higher educational institutions, rather than eschewing higher education altogether; but it is hard to see how access to such institutions could have an adverse effect greater than some wasted time.

Positive net benefits of reservations in admissions to Indian higher educational institutions are thus most clearly evident in the case of India’s elite schools. This is not only because PD beneficiaries who graduate from these schools are in a position to move directly into high-status professions. It is also due to the fact that elite schools have more resources than others, and they can therefore better afford to invest in facilities and programs that increase prospects of PD beneficiary success. It is far from clear that there are positive net benefits to PD policies in admissions further down the quality and prestige hierarchy of Indian higher educational institutions.

To sum up: The Indian experience with PD policies in admissions to higher educational institutions must be judged a success, especially in the case of the most elite institutions, even though it has involved some real costs — particularly in heightened social and political disharmony. Thus positive discrimination policies in Indian higher education have done some real good. Yet they could surely have done and still do better, as I suggest below.

Implications

In order to gain some perspective on India’s experience with PD policies in higher educational admissions, it may be useful to compare the Indian approach with that of the United States — in terms of the three key elements discussed earlier. First, the preferential boosts involved in India’s reservations for Dalits and Adivasis are considerably greater in magnitude, on average, than the preferential boosts implied by the PD policies applied by U.S. higher educational institutions in favour of African, Hispanic and Native Americans. Second, the selection processes used by admissions committees in U.S. colleges and universities are considerably more holistic and nuanced than those used in India, which typically involve only scores on a single critical examination. Third, U.S. colleges and universities typically provide greater support – both academic and financial — to PD beneficiaries than do their Indian counterparts.8 That PD selection procedures and support programs in higher education are significantly stronger in the U.S. than in India is hardly surprising, given that they both require the investment of resources and that the U.S. is a much wealthier country than India.

In each of the three respects just described, PD higher educational admissions policies in the United States are more conducive to good academic performance by PD beneficiaries, and hence more likely to generate positive net benefits, than are the corresponding policies in India. One can therefore assert with some confidence that the net benefits of PD policies in higher educational admissions have been greater in the U.S. than in India.

More to the point here: there is good reason to suspect that India’s PD policies could achieve more favourable consequences if they were modified in the direction of U.S. policies in each of the respects I have highlighted. If the magnitude of preference in India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions were lowered — whether by raising the minimum qualifications required for admission to reserved seats, or by replacing reservations with preferential boost systems having smaller magnitudes of preference — then there would be fewer beneficiaries but a significantly higher proportion of success stories.



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In rejecting Mandal II, I do not wish to suggest that the OBCs it targets deserve no assistance. Most of their members are indeed among India’s less privileged and less advantaged citizens, and
there is a strong case for governmental action seeking to
reduce the huge socioeconomic inequalities that separate them
from India’s ‘forward’ castes and classes

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The passage of time has in fact seen an improvement in the average level of qualification and preparedness of PD-eligible applicants to higher educational institutions, relative to their peers, as greater numbers of Dalits and Adivasis enter the Indian middle class and as more of their children benefit from an improvement in access to good secondary schools. These trends, to be sure, are slow to manifest themselves; one need hardly reiterate that much, much more could and should be done to improve both primary and secondary education for disadvantaged groups in India. The evidence does show, however, that over the past few decades the gap between the average entry test scores of PD beneficiaries and that of other students admitted to higher educational institutions is diminishing. This suggests that reductions in preference magnitudes might not greatly reduce the number of beneficiaries, while holding the promise of generating gains in the proportion of success stories — and hence also in net benefits.

Over the past several decades there has been some improvement in the quality of performance by Dalits and Adivasis in India’s elite higher educational institutions — not only because they are tending to be better prepared on entry but also because experience with positive discrimination has led these schools to develop programs to assist PD beneficiary students in their studies. Much more could be accomplished by developing admissions procedures that would be better capable of identifying Dalit and Adivasi applicants with a high potential for succeeding in a new and challenging academic environment. If additional resources were invested so as to increase both the sophistication of selection processes and the support (of all kinds) provided to PD beneficiaries, then that should pay off in achieving a higher success rate and hence greater net benefits from positive discrimination.

To the extent that PD policies are successfully applied, they tend to reduce persistent inequalities between PD-eligible and other groups in a society. Indeed, in the long run, PD policies should reduce caste and ethnic divisions to the point where there is no longer a case for positive discrimination. It is encouraging that the under-representation of Dalits and Adivasis in highly desirable positions is in fact (slowly) declining in India; but it is obviously still far from disappearing. Thus the strength of the case for PD policies on behalf of each of these groups has diminished somewhat over time; but it remains strong.

The identification of groups to be favoured by preferential selection processes is the most critical decision to be made in adopting policies of positive discrimination. Since integration of the societal elite is arguably the most important objective of PD policies, the eligibility of any particular ethnic community for PD should be positively related to the degree to which the community is in fact under-represented in society’s most desirable positions. This is bound to be highly correlated with the extent to which the average socioeconomic status of community members is below the societal average. But relatively low average socioeconomic status does not alone justify positive discrimination on the basis of caste or ethnicity. A PD policy is warranted to the extent that members of a disadvantaged group have been (and continue to be) mistreated and marginalised on the basis of their group identity — as distinct from their socioeconomic status.

The extension of reservations to more and more groups — by various state governments in the 1970s and 1980s, and then by the central government in the 1990s via its adoption of key recommendations of the Mandal Commission — has generated a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the whole policy of positive discrimination in India. For one thing, it has brought PD benefits to members of groups with considerably weaker cases for preference than the Dalits and the Adivasis. This has sharpened social tension and political contestation around issues of ethnic identity, in a context in which the demarcation of groups as eligible for PD benefits is already quite difficult and can be rather arbitrary. Moreover, the extension of reservations has resulted in a much higher fraction of the whole population becoming eligible for them; this fraction is now in the neighbourhood of 50 per cent at the national level and considerably higher in some states. This raises the salience of concerns over the extent to which PD policies may conflict with notions of merit and efficiency, and it stirs stronger resentment among those ineligible for PD.

Should seats now be reserved for OBCs in India’s elite higher educational institutions, as proposed by the national coalition government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? This proposal — labeled ‘Mandal II’ — would add a 27 per cent quota of reserved seats for OBCs to the 22.5 per cent quota already reserved for Dalits and Adivasis in these institutions, bringing the overall reservation fraction to almost 50 per cent (as is now the case in public sector employment at the national level). As noted earlier, quotas for Dalit and Adivasi students often go unfilled because of an insufficient number of applicants meeting the minimum qualifications. Limited available evidence on OBC reservations in higher educational institutions at the state level suggests that OBC quotas are most often filled, since OBC applicants tend to be better prepared for higher education than Dalit and Adivasi applicants.9 Thus one would expect that, under Mandal II, the proportion of PD beneficiaries entering elite educational institutions would rise to a level in the neighbourhood of 40 per cent.

I believe that reservation of as many as 40 per cent of the slots available in an elite educational institution for formally less qualified but potentially successful PD beneficiaries is likely to result in the inclusion of too many beneficiaries who do not really have the potential to succeed, and the displacement of too many non-beneficiaries who would be much more likely to be successful. Moreover, such a major increase in the percentage of reservations would dilute the resources available to provide human and financial support to PD beneficiaries, which — as noted earlier — is critical to the generation of satisfactory rates of success.

Instead of elevating the proportion of reserved seats in elite educational institutions to a very high level by making eligible a vast new array of OBCs, I believe it would be much wiser to limit the reservations to groups who are indisputably among the most marginalised in India. Dalits and Adivasis are explicitly recognised as such in the Indian Constitution. Any other group aspiring to reservations should be able to demonstrate a comparable degree of marginalisation at the hands of mainstream Indian society.10 Whether or not any other groups are judged to meet this standard, it would behoove policy-makers not to define PD admissions policies in terms of quotas proportional to population, but instead to structure such policies around more modest preference magnitudes, more nuanced methods of selection, and more support for those selected.

In rejecting Mandal II, I do not wish to suggest that the OBCs it targets deserve no assistance. Most of their members are indeed among India’s less privileged and less advantaged citizens, and there is a strong case for governmental action seeking to reduce the huge socioeconomic inequalities that separate them from India’s ‘forward’ castes and classes. My point is that positive discrimination is only one of many possible policy tools that could be enlisted in the struggle to bring about greater equality of opportunity in unequal societies. PD policies have costs as well as benefits; and they should be applied where they are most likely to generate significant benefits and give rise to limited costs. In this respect, I believe that PD policies have already been over-extended in India; and further extension (unless combined with judicious contraction) will be counter-productive. To deal with most of the many kinds of inequalities that still plague Indian society, policy-makers should look to different kinds of social and economic policies that can be deployed alongside positive discrimination.11

1. Note that a PD policy does not necessarily result in the displacement of better qualified applicants by less qualified applicants from preferred groups; depending on the circumstances, it might either help to offset biases in conventional selection procedures or introduce additional biases into such procedures.

2. One cannot rule out a priori the possibility that a PD policy — by recognising hidden capabilities of community applicants — will actually improve the accuracy of applicant assessment. In this case PD beneficiaries would, on average, be capable of performing better academically than their non-PD-eligible peers with the same formal qualifications. It stands to reason, however, that even in this case there will be some preference magnitude beyond which the performance level of PD beneficiaries will fall below that of peers selected without any such preference.

3. Direct financial aid to needy beneficiaries is another kind of financial resource commitment that can make a significant contribution to the success of a PD policy. Many student beneficiaries may not be able to afford all of the (unsubsidised) expenses associated with attending an educational institution, so they may require financial aid just to enroll. Students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families are much more likely to have to drop out of an educational program — temporarily or permanently —in order to help out their family by contributing their labor to work within the family or by earning additional income. Means-tested financial aid to PD beneficiaries can clearly help to prevent such problems from compromising the success of PD admissions policies.

4. See chapters 10 and 12 of my book, Affirmative Action in the United States and India: A Comparative Perspective, Routledge, London, 2004 (printed and distributed in South Asia by Foundation Books) — hereafter cited as my book. I have also presented much of this evidence in ‘The Impact of Reservation on Admissions to Higher Education in India’, Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay, India), Vol. 39, No. 39, Sept. 25, 2004.

5. See my book, Affirmative Action in the United States and India, chapter 7.

6. Although not all Dalits and Adivasis are necessarily PD beneficiaries — owing their admission to reservations — this is true of the vast majority in the more prestigious educational institutions.

7. The evidence of underperformance by PD Dalit and Adivasi beneficiaries — whatever its limitations — does refute the notion that India’s PD policies in higher educational admissions might actually be improving the accuracy of applicant assessment (see footnote 2 above) — at least insofar as such assessment is designed to identify those students best able to perform well academically.

8. In both Indian and the US, the extent of the support for disadvantaged students is highly correlated with the academic quality and the financial resources of the institution concerned; thus some of India’s elite educational institutions — such as the Institutes of Technology — have done fairly well in this respect.

9. See, for example, V. Patwardhan, and V. Palshikar, (1992), ‘Reserved Seats in Medical Education: a Study’, Journal of Education and Social Change, 5: 1-117.

10. Data compiled by S. Deshpande and Y. Yadav suggest that India’s Muslims may have the strongest case to join Dalits and Adivasis as beneficiaries of affirmative action; see Tables 1-3 of their article, ‘Redesigning Affirmative Action’, Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay, India), Vol. 41, No. 24, June 17, 2006.

11. This point has been clearly articulated by A. Deshpande; see the last section of the article, ‘The Eternal Debate’, Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay, India), Vol. 41, No. 24, June 17, 2006.

About Author: Thomas E. Weisskopf is Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan. A dissenting economist and a founder of the Union for Radical Political Economics, he has lived in India in the 1960s, teaching at the Indian Statistical Institute. He has worked extensively on affirmative action in the US and India

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