The Economic Reservation

Recently the Ministry of Human Resource Development rejected the request of the committee of Directors of the IIT to raise the tuition fee at the IITs from Rs. 90,000 to Rs. 3 Lakh per annum, but as a consideration, towards the need for increasing the revenue out of the students availing world class education facility, agreed to a raise of the fee to Rs. 2 Lakh per annum, a raise of just a mere 122% over the previous year’s fee. Where the legislative government have set the precedence of raising their salaries by 400%, a raise of 122% seems to be quite modest by all means.

This move was even applauded by certain sections of people and media. They termed it as an inevitable move, going by the increase of prices in all the areas. It was also celebrated that this raise will not affect the fee for the reserved category students; that is, those students who may have got admissions to these prestigious institutions through reservation, for them there would be no change in the fee structure. The government cares about the upliftment of the socially backward classes and shall continue to subsidize the education of the students from the reserved categories.

In all this gaga, however, there is yet another take that has somewhere got lost. Is it only the people from the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Castes as notified by the government that are economically backward? Or, is there parity among all the persons of the so-called forward classes economically, that they can all afford the now high price of technical education in India? The banks and the students’ loan has been put forth as an answer to such questions. If banks and students’ loans are a solution to the high price of education for the economically backward sections of the so-called forward classes, then why is the government so keen on subsidizing the education for those who come within the creamy layers within the backward classes?

What has totally been ignored by the people and the media, at large, is that a second form of reservation has silently been imposed on the general class of persons in India, as far as education is concerned. The first divide is clearly among the people from within the forward classes of those who can afford a disposable income of Rs. 2 Lakh per annum to those who cannot. For those who can afford this price for the premium education facility, there is no bound but for those who cannot they have to get themselves qualified through banks even after crossing the hurdle of getting selected in an IIT at the first place.

In the recent case of the JNU row, a lot of debates had taken place as to why should the tax-payers subsidize higher education in India. Arguments and counter arguments flowed from both the sides of the fence. The futility of academic worth over economic worth of an individual was also highlighted in some of the forums. In an economically aligned world, economics shall always find a priority over academics but that should not undermine the importance of academics in the long run. Today, we take pride in having Indian working at important positions in most of the advanced technological giants of the world. All these people have been able to take up such positions only through our race towards academic excellence and not by an immediate evaluation of one’s economic worth.

Today, the people in the US, under the leadership of Bernie Sanders are rallying for government aid and subsidy for education. They have realized that an immediate race towards economic stability by an individual has been detrimental to their society as a whole; and we are trying to move in the backward direction. It is the same logic through which, at one point of time, the home-makers in India were equated to beggars in a survey and that today rural youth is making a beeline towards cities, migrating for an improvement of their economic worth. In cities, which are mostly populated by the nuclear families with both the partners working, the growth of human population in such sections has seen the steepest decline in population growth. That is to say, those who are becoming more and more economically strong and independent may not have a large chunk of next generation to enjoy the benefits. On the other hand, if the rural youth migrate out of the villages, we may find again ourselves totally dependent on outside imports for our food-grains.

Some might argue, that I am being a bit paranoid about students’ loans and for an individual who gets selected in an engineering program at an IIT, will have a ready access to such loans. Banks would be more than willing to fund the education of such students as for them the loans to IIT graduates will be most secured. For the banks, betting on the IIT entrance qualifiers would be much safer bet as compared to the loans that they have been issuing to petty farmers from Maharashtra or Telangana to industrialists like Vijay Mallya to even the state governments like Punjab. At least here, they would be assured of the loans not becoming a “Non-Performing Asset”.

We have had many rags-to-riches stories where students from very humble backgrounds have qualified to these institutions and have struggled to gather even the earlier fees. Secondly, a student coming out of a backgrounds of having seen tough times within his close social environment with repayment of loans, may not even consider adding yet another loan on the family or himself. In fact, the unprecedented raise in the tuition fee by the IITs is a direct attack on the efforts of individuals and institutions like the Super 30 of Bihar. Throughout these years the Super 30 has been teaching students from extremely poor families in Bihar so that they may see the light of the day from poverty through education, but a raised fee would be the next stumbling block in the way of such meritorious students.

Also, we have seen so many IITians who go in for higher studies either in management or even abroad, a student’s loan of over Rs. 8 lakhs would be yet another impediment to the aspirations of such individuals. We may end up having less number of IITians within the Civil Services qualifiers as such dreams may also be grounded at the back of an increasing loan amount.

When the Mandal Commission was implemented almost 25 years back, much hue and cry broke loose. Ultimately, the Supreme Court has to intervene and limit the amount of reservation to a maximum of 50% of the total available seats. Now, yet again, a reservation has been imposed on the general category of students, an economic reservation; and the imposition has been so subtle that most of the people affected are not even aware of its long term implications