Review of Exclusive Inequalities

Surajkumar.H. EE11B075
The article Exclusive Inequalities by Satish Deshpande has a 3-fold purpose. To analyze the then current scenario of caste discrimination in education which triggered the Mandal II act, the state of the education system, examination paradigms & their salient features, and the role of merit in the education system.

If one looks at the data, one can easily see the skewed nature of education, in comparison to urban population of said group. In nearly every field, the so-called lower castes are tragically underrepresented. The entire basis for comparison here is based on the ratio of educational degrees to urban representation. Whether this is a valid assumption or not is a different topic as a whole, but let us assume that the urban populace is a good measure representation of education and caste diversity. The author then makes a valid point that discrimination (in some sense or the other) is all around us. There will be divisions in society, either based on wealth, tradition, merit, skill, and so on. It is natural that any selection procedure will need a discriminating factor, to set people apart. The key question he tries to address is whether caste should be counted as one of these factors, playing a role in enrollment for educational institutions.

He then switches tracks and moves into the realm of education. By its very nature, education is an elitist society, targeted at amassing all the wealth and knowledge, and spreading it to a select few chosen ones. The educated ones will gain a macro view of society, holds immense decision making power, and is in general responsible for the improvement and propagation of knowledge from one generation to the next. Naturally, the scrutiny process for this is bound to be strict. Specific education is meant to filter out those seen as competent by the practitioners of the field. The most common filter is one based on merit, through an examination, testing ones prowess in the subject. Historically, India has an abundance of public institutions offering up the best training in this sense. Many private institutions have also come up, which rival them in quality, but let us focus on the public ones. They were set up at a time where the post-independence upper caste was looking for something to invest in, and saw this as the perfect opportunity. It held tremendous potential to give back to the country. As Satish points out, these instead created a sort of

Credential Capital for the individual as part of these institutions. Earlier, the only place to cash in this was the country, due to limited outside trade and job opportunities. But with the opening of markets, this capital became globally cashable, causing it to be in great demand. The demand now far exceeds the supply, giving rise to the need for a revised filtering mechanism. He also highlights that the merit and resource discrimination can both masquerade as each other. A merit system is seen as perfectly credible, while a resource system is seen as unjust. Since both of these exist together, people can complain about the system without understanding its true workings. Another major factor is that in a country like India, with a large population, the number of job seekers is much higher. This immediately pushes up the average requirement that each viable candidate must satisfy. Since our capital in this case turns out to be an educational degree, the number of people who aspire to earn degrees is higher. Note that now, the education system as a whole is fragmented into those wanting the degrees, and those into the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

Examinations have a dual purpose, according to Satish. One is to provide a direct certification of knowledge, and the other is to give an entitlement, a position in society. But due to the varied interest and objectives of the people entering, the examination isolates both those with the most passion for education, and those who can give back the most. These 2 fields are very closely linked, and are the basis for any merit based discrimination. But he argues that when the discriminating factor is very low, the system breaks down, and the choices become seemingly random. We dont know how the similar results are set apart, and on what criterion people with almost identical merit are selected/rejected. The procedure to differentiate is unknown to us and is completely up to the educational institution. Due to this closed source nature, people begin to doubt validity of such an examination, and is indeed the source of much resentment. These inherent flaws in the examination system do not decrease its usefulness. It is indeed a very good mechanism to identify talent. But when it comes to defining talent, or merit, at a fine line, to differentiate almost equal scores, equal talent, is the major source of conflict.

So far, we have only considered the model of the examination system in education, and we have seen that under certain conditions it fails and becomes seemingly arbitrary. Now let us throw the inequalities back into the mix. In todays world, pure merit alone is not enough of a discriminating factor. Couple this with the fact that the examination is not very accurate, and there is a need for more factors to differentiate.

The tendency is to use wealth and social resources to provide this additional discrimination. These dont even have to be explicitly considered, as they are inbred into the system. Every person has a different economic and social background, a different set of experiences which would shape both his/her passion and merit. People with less exposure to a certain field will naturally be unaware of its existence, or its depth and hence may not opt for that as a stream of study. The perfect example is the rural scenario. Many people dont know of the plethora of different degree programs, suited to so many different interests, or may not have adequate training or knowledge to compete with their urban counterparts, simply based on lack of resources. Historically, we can easily see how this explains the skewed caste representation. The current scenario is very different. Access to resources is much easier, and to say that there still exists a large gap in the merit of the castes may not be very accurate. And yet, the numbers speak for themselves and hence the explanation must lie with the other factors. These are not as easy to target, as they are subtle, and operate unseen. Satish concludes the essay by certain proposals to change the examination system to help bridge the 3-point decimal differences. One of these is a transparent policy framework which would be instrumental, if in nothing else, then to dispel all illusions that the examination is biased. He says that we need better definitions of merit, and a system where each is free to define it as he wishes, and uses that to differentiate, the system we are in now, will not take us forward. Now that we have identified what could be the reason for the tremendous gap, we can devise better and targeted solutions. These solutions may seemingly have no direct relation to education at all, but will affect it through the Domino effect. History has shown us that caste uplifting schemes have been very difficult in practice, solely because most of the discrimination remains unseen, and because mindsets are difficult to change. Yet in order to bridge the caste gap, and to eradicate the need for such a definition as caste, we must labor on, and try to actively shape the minds of people. Legislations like the Mandal II are bold steps in this general direction. There are bound to be many haters, and victims of such a system, but in order to achieve a zero-caste discrimination system this is necessary. On the whole, he makes some bold statements. There is a surge in the demand for education, due to the large population conceiving education as the differentiating factor to enter the job market. This excess demand has caused the exam paradigm to come under scrutiny. The merit and resource discrimination being interchangeable, the inability to properly define who is worthy clearly, and citing these as the origin of the caste misrepresentation for education in India, all seem valid claims. While the Urban population may not be the best indicator of the education and caste diversity in India, it serves as a fair measure, and by these standards we can see something amiss. Overall he is clear that our current path, of pseudo-merit discrimination is not the path to go, due to the highly subjective definition of merit.