[Though the outlines of the two cases are
similar, differences between how the world’s two largest democracies have
chosen to redress centuries of past discrimination are striking. While affirmative
action in the United States is now threatened, the program in India is a vast
system of political patronage that increasingly works to reward the powerful
rather than uplift those in need.]
 |
Kuni Takahashi for The
New York Times
“Of the thousands of
reasons to hate the government, reservations is definitely one of them,” said Sneha Sekhsaria, 25, of Calcutta, facing front at right, of the quotas used for university admissions |
CHENNAI, India — The two women both claim that affirmative action cost them
coveted spots at elite public universities. Both cases have now reached the
Supreme Court.
One of the women, Abigail Fisher, 22, who is
white, says she was denied admission to the University of Texas based on her
race, and on Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court is to hear her plea in
what may be the year’s most important decision. The other woman is from the
southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and two weeks ago the Indian Supreme Court
ordered that she be admitted to medical school pending the outcome of a broader
court review.
“When I came to know that I could not get into
any medical college, I was really shocked,” C. V. Gayathri, the Indian student,
said in an interview. “I didn’t speak to anyone for a week. I cried. I was very
depressed.”
Though the outlines of the two cases are
similar, differences between how the world’s two largest democracies have
chosen to redress centuries of past discrimination are striking. While affirmative
action in the United States is now threatened, the program in India is a vast
system of political patronage that increasingly works to reward the powerful
rather than uplift those in need.
Indeed, the caste-based affirmative action here
raises questions, not only for India and the United States, but also for
nations like Brazil and
Malaysia that have adopted similar anti-discrimination programs. Without
diligent judicial oversight, experts say, the efforts can help perpetuate
inequality rather than redress it.
In Tamil Nadu, for instance, 69 percent of
university admissions are now set aside for what the state has determined to be
“backward castes.” Many of those favored with these set-asides have controlled
Tamil Nadu’s government and much of its resources for generations, but they
claim special status by pointing to a caste survey done in 1931. (Ms. Gayathri,
17, is a Brahmin whose parents are civil servants with modest incomes.)
Five prominent university officials in Tamil
Nadu said in interviews that those given set-asides at their institutions were
generally the children of doctors, lawyers and high-level bureaucrats. The
result is that rich students routinely get preference over more accomplished
poor ones who do not happen to belong to the favored castes. None of the
officials would allow their names to be used for fear of angering the
government ministers who benefit politically and personally from the program.
India’s caste system was created nearly 1,500
years ago to organize occupations in a feudal agricultural society. Those at
the bottom of the system, now known as Dalits, were forbidden in some places
from even allowing their shadows to fall on those at the top, known as
Brahmins. Most castes were deemed “backward,” which meant that they were
consigned to menial jobs.
Over the last 30 years, however, India’s economy
has been transformed, much of its populace has moved from villages to sprawling
cities, and once distinct castes have been scrambled. That has led to the
erosion of historic differences in education and increased income mobility
within castes in India, recent studies have found.
“Caste is no longer an economic restriction,”
said Viktoria Hnatkovska, an assistant professor of economics at the University of
British Columbia, and a co-author of several studies on the changing
role of caste in India.
Nonetheless, quotas have transformed the taint
of “backwardness” into a coveted designation.
The Gujjars of Rajasthan, for instance, held
violent riots two years ago to protest the government’s refusal to declare them
as “most backward.” Politicians win elections in India by promising to bestow
this one-time curse, which has led to a dramatic expansion in those considered
backward decades after the designation had true economic meaning.
Indeed, caste awareness among the young is
sustained in part because of set-asides, so a program intended to eliminate the
caste system is now blamed by many for sustaining it.
“When I was filling out my college application
forms, there was this box for caste,” said Sneha Sekhsaria, 25, of Calcutta. “I
had to ask my dad what our caste was, and he had to think about it for 15
minutes before telling me that we were in the general category.”
The general category meant that she received no
preference, a fact that Ms. Sekhsaria blames for her failure to qualify for
medical school. She went to dental school instead.
“Being a doctor was always my dream, but I got a
dental degree instead and that’s O.K.,” she said.
But she remains bitter that some of her friends
who scored more poorly than she did on entrance exams were able to become
doctors even though she and others in her circle were entirely unaware that
they were “backward.”
Nonetheless, the benefits that flow from caste
quotas have made them popular, and supporting them is one of the few issues on
which the present government and its opposition agree. Within the next few
months, the Indian Parliament is expected to overwhelming approve a
constitutional amendment that would allow caste-based quotas not just in
educational settings and in government hiring but also in government
promotions.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly tried to
curtail the scope of caste quotas, but the Parliament has passed amendments in
response to protect and even expand them. The court has ruled that quotas
should not exceed 50 percent of university admissions, but Tamil Nadu has
ignored this restriction and a case challenging the state’s larger quota has
been pending since 1994.
In the meantime, the court has ordered the state
to provide extra slots to at least some students who contest the higher quotas,
including Ms. Gayathri, who has been admitted to Tirunelveli Medical College.
In an interview, Salman Khurshid, India’s law minister and minister for
minority affairs, said that wealthy beneficiaries of caste quotas should
acknowledge that they no longer need set-asides and voluntarily bow out of the
system.
Some rules forbid the wealthy — or “creamy
layer” — from taking advantage of quotas, but those rules have not been
implemented in many states and are widely ignored in others.
D. Sundaram, a retired professor of sociology
from Madras University and a longtime member of Tamil Nadu’s now-disbanded
Backward Classes Commission, defended the state’s quotas by saying that even
three generations of wealth and power cannot reverse centuries of backwardness.
“The system has not been in place long enough,”
Dr. Sundaram said.
To be sure, many Dalits and people from tribal
backgrounds are still overwhelmingly poor, and even many critics of India’s
caste-based quotas acknowledge that set-asides for them may still be worthy.
Ravi Kumar, general secretary of a Dalit
political party in Tamil Nadu, agreed that many of those who benefit from the
state’s vast caste-based quotas are wealthy and powerful. But his party
supports quotas, also known as reservations, for the wealthy “because if we
opposed them they would stop all reservations,” Mr. Kumar said.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for
Policy Research in New Delhi, said that caste-based quotas will
gradually become less important as the quotas themselves make public
universities less attractive to the most talented students. “The talented
people will simply migrate away,” he said.
But that is no comfort to Ms. Sekhsaria, whose
family ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars to send her to a private
dental school after she was turned down for a government medical school, where
the fees are modest.
“Of the thousands of reasons to hate the
government, reservations is definitely one of them,” she said.
Niharika Mandhana contributed reporting from Chennai and New
Delhi.
