Saurabh Agrawal Posted online: Monday, April 10, 2006 at 1316 hours IST Updated: Tuesday, May 09, 2006 at 1253 hours IST
I graduated from IIM Bangalore last year and am now currently working with HSBC, Investment Banking in London. I read about the possible 49.5% reservation in the central universities (including IIMs and IITs) on your website and will like to share my views on it.
I believe the best way to arrive at any conclusion is to do a 'stakeholders analysis' of the decision to reserve 49.5% seats in the central universities. The analysis is based on my personal experience at IIM Bangalore, hampered by the limited knowledge of other institutes, most of my analysis is based on the educational pattern in an IIM hopefully this will be relevant to other universities as well. In my view the key stakeholders of this decision should be:
1. Central Government, 2. The institutions, 3. Prospective candidates (further broken down in general and backward classes, for the sake of analysis), and 4. Society in general (primarily compromising of corporates recruiting at these universities).
Here is what these stakeholders gain or lose from the proposed policy:
- Prospective candidates (backward classes): The institutes of higher education, like IITs and IIMs, are centres of excellence in India, primarily because of the quality of students joining them. With the amount of time that a candidate spends in these places (around 1.5 years in academic studies in an IIM) it is impossible to change the fundamental knowledge level of a student. These institutions rely more on the initial knowledge base of the students and build up on that by a open atmosphere for discussion among peers and quick inputs of theory by the high quality faculty. If a candidate has not received proper education and/or, does not have a initial knowledge base to build on, he will find himself completely out of the place. It is next to impossible for these institutes to change the candidate completely at the later stage of his life, which would eventually lead to a total loss for those candidates, who didn't had a proper education beforehand.
Besides, the ultimate aim of a candidate is to find a good job offer after their university education. The reservation may help these candidates in getting admission in the universities, but if the companies are not convinced with the quality, they would rather go empty handed than
recruiting them- which once again leads to waste of some crucial time for these candidates.
- Prospective candidates (general class): Every seat given to less deserving candidate because of the politics of reservation, implies a deserving candidate from the general background is being penalised for being born in a particular caste- something which is out of his control!
- The universities: As already mentioned the methodology employed by the institutes like, IIMs and IITs, is to build up on the already high knowledge base of the candidates (This commitment to quality of input is so severe that IIMs are at times criticised as just being a screening point rather than an educational institute). A significant amount of learning in these institutes is through peer to peer interaction in and outside the classroom. A compromise on the quality of students would imply a total loss of the component of learning from peers. Taking the liberty to use an example from the operations management, the limiting factor (the process having least capacity) determines the throughput rate of the entire system.
The knowledge gained through group work/ projects etc. will diminish if people are not at similar level of knowledge base. This will have a major impact on the overall quality of education being imparted by these institutes- both inside and outside the classroom.
Also, a major factor in determining the ranking and reputation of these institutes is the placement after the programme. If merit is not the only criteria in admissions, the placement figures are bound to go down having adverse impact on the reputation of these institutes.
- Society (particularly corporates recruiting from these institutes): With the Indian economy growing at a fantastic rate, India Inc needs an ever growing supply of competent management and technical grads from the top quality institutes in this country. Compromising on meritocracy means restricting the supply of competent grads for the Indian companies.
The sole winner (?):
- Government: The UPA government will have a short term benefit in terms of gaining the vote bank of the SC/STs and OBCs. But even in the long term they will lose out due to the adverse impact of the policy.
Conclusion: A policy which has adverse impact on all the major stakeholders, being forced through to gain some votes by the our central government. On this auspicious occasion of Ram navmi, I just hope that Ishwar provides some intelligence to our political leaders!
Alternative suggestion: If the development of the backward class is the real agenda of the government, which in my view is a legitimate concern, I suggest starting a new program for them. It can be say, 1 year pre program training for them or, may be a different program of longer length than the normal one. But all of these will be short term measures, the real need is to tackle the problem from where it originates, right at the primary educational level, i.e. ensuring that all the children of this nation irrespective of caste or religion getting high quality education from their childhood!
The views expressed above are of the writer and not necessarily of expressindia.com
I graduated from IIM Bangalore last year and am now currently working with HSBC, Investment Banking in London. I read about the possible 49.5% reservation in the central universities (including IIMs and IITs) on your website and will like to share my views on it.
