OBC Reservations: An IIT Faculty Member's View

I am here quoting the views of Prof. M Balakrishnan, a computer science professor at IIT Delhi. You can get the details at the iit4equality yahoo group.

Nearly six decades after independence, this country is planning to
announce that majority of its population is backward and does not
have equal opportunity to pursue education and employment. Along
with this, it is going to open up a Pandora's Box by various caste
groups to be classified as "backward". What an interesting way to
begin the 21st century when finally India was beginning to emerge as
a serious player in the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that
is being doled out is the seats in the elite medical, engineering
and management Institutes. What bothers me is no one is interested
in even consulting the people who have built these Institutions and
brought them to this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of
reservations in general but here I would confine myself to the
issues concerning IITs. At least here with my three decade long
association, I can claim to know something. Many of these arguments
may be applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical and
management disciplines as well.

Today IITs are considered excellent educational institutions. There
is a countrywide scramble to get into these with many students
spending the best part of their teen years in preparing for its
entrance examinations. This should not be confused with ranking of
universities where just a couple of IITs make it in the top 500.
These rankings deal primarily with the research output and not with
the quality of undergraduate education. I can confidently say that
any ranking of quality of undergraduate engineers produced would put
IITs in the top 20 worldwide if not in the top 10. And it is this
achievement that is going to be hard to maintain with the proposed
reservations policy. Before we go any further, it would be best to
examine how this excellence has been achieved.

The fundamental contribution that the Central Government has made to
these institutions is in generous funding (by Indian, not global
standards) combined with unmatched autonomy. The main point of
engagement between the Government and these Institutions has been
through the appointment of Directors. Except for a brief period
during the last administration, the Governments had refrained from
any major politicking in these appointments. They have by and large
appointed the best available applicant Professor from the same or
another IIT for the job. These venerable people had themselves a
great pride in these Institutions and have ran the Institutes with
the best of their abilities (maybe not always efficiently but always
fairly) without major vested interest.

For someone outside IITs to understand the power of this position is
not easy. The Director virtually appoints the complete senior
administration including the deputy directors and deans, chairs all
the faculty selections including that for the Professors, is the
chairman of the senate and thus the academic head, is the financial
head and also the administrative head. For most people living in the
campus, which includes 90% of faculty and students, he is also the
chairman of the local municipality (all major complaints on water,
electricity, sewage etc. would reach him). This ensures that the
buck almost always stops with him and thus decision making is
unavoidable. This autonomy that has been the hallmark of these
institutions is being eroded. There were attempts in the last
Government (fortunately not vigorously pursued) to tell IITs what to
teach. The present decision would strike at the fundamentals of IITs
as the Government no longer feels whom to teach and how many to
teach is best decided by these Institutions themselves. This in my
opinion is the most dangerous fallout as it strikes at the very core
of the success of these Institutions. Once the lines of control gets
blurred, there would be no stopping, as today's political
functioning is clearly not dictated by long term vision. Soon we
could have reservations in faculty and create a caste based
patronage system which has destroyed many of the once excellent
state universities.

In IITs, the faculty selected and promoted solely based on merit has
maintained a high standard of ethical behavior, have taken their
teaching and research seriously, refrained from politicking
themselves and supported the Institute in many ways to fulfill its
commitments. Who are these faculty members? A large number are our
own alumni (undergraduates as well as postgraduates), majority of
them have studied or conducted research in the west and almost all
of them have had opportunities of pursuing financially much more
lucrative careers in India and abroad. Thus each faculty member is
here by choice and he/she has exercised that choice with one major
attraction - opportunity to teach, interact and work with extremely
bright students perhaps unmatched anywhere. It is this attraction
that is being tampered with. In a situation where all IITs are short
of faculty and desperately trying to innovate to attract faculty
under the constraints of the pay commission dictated salaries (while
competing with Sensex based salaries), this is not a pleasant
development.

IITs have had reservations for SC/STs for decades. Why would this be
different? Aren't these students likely to be better prepared than
the students admitted under the existing reserved category? Here I
would like to share some of the facts with the readers. IITs have
been admitting SC/ST students for years under two modes. From the
general category, a significantly lower JEE cutoff is decided and
reserved category students scoring above this cutoff are admitted
directly to the UG programmes. Another still lower cutoff is decided
and reserved category students from this set are admitted to a one
year preparatory course conducted by IITs themselves. After passing
this course, they can join the programmes without having to appear
in JEE again. Even this exercise collectively yields less than 15%
in IIT Delhi though the quota amounts to nearly 22.5%. Half of the
reserved category students manage to clear courses comfortably while
the other half struggle on the margins. What would be called a good
performance (cumulative grade point average or CGPA of 8 and above)
and is achieved by nearly forty percent of general category
students, is rare and occurs once in many years among the reserved
category students. It is not that all general category students do
well. There is nearly a 5% "dropout" rate even among them which is a
cause of concern but mainly attributed to the burnout due to JEE
preparation phase. The "dropout" students have no effect on teaching
as they neither are regular nor make their presence felt in classes.
The remaining part of weak students is too small and at present
hardly any instructor would pitch his / her course at that level. On
the other hand, the present policy may introduce a large band of
weak students which no instructor can ignore. This would definitely
result in drop in the quality of education. It is the hypocrisy of
the highest order that on one hand the reservation for SC/STs is
considered a success and quoted for extension to OBCs, and on the
other hand, no hard data on the performance of these students is
available in the public domain. Some administrators I talked to
consider this data as sensitive! Analysis of where the reserved
category students go after graduation would be enlightening. I do
not have the sensitive data but my experience shows that most of
them either go to services like IAS/IES or to the public sector
companies. Normally this choice of careers by IIT graduates should
be a matter of satisfaction except that both these entries are again
using the reservation quota. Is it empowerment or crutches for life?

In this whole episode, the most stunning news for me was when the
Hon'ble minister announced increase in intake to compensate for the
reservations. This would amount to nearly 56% overall increase in
undergraduate intake in the IITs. This showed complete ignorance of
what makes IIT undergraduate education tick. There are few
Institutions in the world where undergraduate students get to
interact one to one and so freely with such high-caliber faculty.
Students are advised on courses in small groups, interact over
hostel dinners, go on industrial trips and finally carry out a well
supervised project. Every undergraduate student does an
intensive "novel" project either individually or in groups of two
and he/she is effectively "supervised" by a faculty member. Many of
them result in publications. This system evolved when the student-
faculty ratio was 6:1 and is getting strained at the seams when it
has reached 12:1. In some disciplines like Computer Sciences and
Electrical Engineering where market competition is heavy, it has
already gone to 20:1 and above. Though currently producing excellent
results, it is a highly non-scalable mechanism. Intake increase on
this scale, when effectively faculty strengths in key areas are
decreasing could sound a death-knell to one of our few international
brand names.

I have a poser for Prof. Jayati Ghosh, my well renowned colleague
from JNU and a member of the knowledge commission. She has justified
reservations in IITs based on the poor ranking of IITs
internationally. Her argument is anyway these Institutions are not
great, why they should crib about the quality of intake. She nowhere
states that any of the 400+ odd Institutions worldwide which are
ranked above IITs have achieved their status through reservations.
In that case all Tamil Nadu Engineering Colleges with 69%
reservation for decades (openly defying the Supreme Court suggested
norm of 50%) now should be at the top.

Postscript: Finally, I would like to seek opinion on the composition
of our next Olympics team. We have admittedly done much poorer in
sports than education. Should our next Olympics team be chosen on
caste basis or perhaps with adequate representation to athletes
aged 40+ who are at present completely unrepresented? After all we
do not have much to lose as we only win one bronze medal in
alternate Olympics. I would no longer be surprised if some future
Sports Minister considers caste based quotas for our national
cricket team. After all that would be worth a few votes and the
nation would have been well prepared by then to cheer only for its
own caste brethren!

The author is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT
Delhi. He has been with IIT Delhi since 1977 except for a three year
stint outside India. Currently he is on Sabbatical and working with
a startup. The views represented here are completely his own.
M. Balakrishnan (mbala@...)
5, Taxila Apartments
IIT Delhi Campus,
New Delhi - 110016