Reservation: Why the debate must continue ...

First, the government has decided to go with a blanket 27% reservation for OBCs, with no 'creamy layer' exclusion. This was as expected; anything else would have been a political suicide for any of the parties in the parliament.

While the quota opponents put up a strong and vigorous fight (sometimes in insensitive ways), theirs was bound to be a losing battle. First, they didn't have the backing of any of the mainstream political parties. More importantly, they didn't have time on their side; the government (ministers, top bureaucrats, ...) could protract the proceedings, creating an illusion of forward movement, all the while fully expecting the students to give it up and return to classes. The bureaucrats have all the time and nothing to lose, while the opposite is true for the students.

The students' protests have not been in vain. They have achieved several (minor) victories: the implementation has been postponed to next year, and the government has promised to 'protects' the number of general category seats by increasing the overall number of seats by more than 50 percent.

* * *

The media are already going 'uh-oh' about the current plan to increase the number of seats. They are publishing scary stories about how this will ruin our education system. I am not worried, for the following reasons:

• this increase doesn't kick in all at one time; student population will rise roughly by 12-13 percent every year until they stabilize after 4-5 years.
• Even the initial spurt of 12-13 percent has been postponed to 2007.
• Government is committed to funding this increase; it must be held to it.

Institutions must now look for ways of dealing with the increased number of students, and teachers will have to figure out how to handle larger classes. While I admit that the problems are difficult, they are not insurmountable, and the institutions have one full year to work on them.

* * *

Quotas for OBCs have attracted specific criticism: Pratap Bhanu Mehta (who, together with Andre Beteille, resigned from the National Knowledge Commission; read their letters here) is quite blunt:

[...]OBCs have been capitalising on a narrative of injustice which is not theirs, and in the process compounding greater injustice. It is a widely known fact that many OBCs are now akin to what used to be dominant castes. Giving them special access to state offices is, in some cases, working against the interests of SCs/STs. While many of the atrocities against Dalits are perpetuated by high castes, OBC atrocities on Dalits are no less significant. It is a travesty of justice to contrive special measures to reinforce OBC dominance. [...]

Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit columnist, has argued that among the OBCs, only the truly oppressed (the Most Backward Classes, or MBCs) deserve special attention, but not the others.

Among bloggers, RealityCheck and Confused have strongly argued against quotas for OBCs (while supporting the existing quotas for SC/STs). As Yogendra Yadav observes, OBCs are a vast group with "substantial differences within different jatis ... from different regions". While I feel that Rreality Check (unduly) focuses on the high end of the OBC spectrum, I also realize the danger that quotas may become dominated by a few castes at the top of the OBC spectrum, leaving a lot of the really needy behind.

This implies that this debate and discussion must continue, through collection and analysis of hard data. The government is unlikely to part with information it finds uncomfortable; but we must extract it using every available means: the Right to Information Act, the courts, and the parliament itself.

* * *

Quotas are a blunt tool for achieving the goal of speedy integration of disadvantaged groups into the mainstream. They don't take into account the different levels of oppression -- and the resulting social disadvantage -- experienced by different groups of people. They also ignore other types of disadvantages: gender, urban-rural divide, for example. An affirmative action program that gives due weightage to these factors (such as the plans -- linked here -- suggested by Purushottam Agrawal, and Yogendra Yadav and Satish Deshpande) would be far more preferable to a crude mechanism like quotas.

Having said that, I must add that these other AA mechanisms open up many more variables that would need to be negotiated politically. Also, given the long history of cream-free quotas for SCs and STs, it would be difficult to push -- politically -- for any other kind of plan for OBCs. While I am all for fine-tuned, wonkish plans that are backed by solid data, I also realize that they are dead on arrival when there's no political backing.

However, the final outcome -- choosing a blunt tool of quotas, without a broader consultation and debate -- is disappointing. Here was an opportunity to take a fresh look at reservation, and do it right. This opportunity appears to have been lost. Not only that, the way the government is going about it indicates that it won't monitor how well its quota program is doing. Thus, some vigilance on the part of NGOs and the press (and bloggers, too!) is essential.

* * *

Now that the shortage of educational opportunities is in stark display, this is probably the best time to push strongly for reforms in higher education. See Satya's blog (and, specifically, this post, and the links in it) for great ideas on many differnt reform measurres: private sector participation, strong regulation that demands voluntary disclosure of all relevant information by institutions, accreditation by independent rating agencies, the works.

Who's afraid of castes? Not me ...

In his comment on this post, the blogger who runs Reality Check asks, "Would you agree to adding caste enumerations to census 2011?". I say 'yes', unconditionally.

When I learnt, during this ongoing debate on quotas, that our census process does not collect data on caste, my first reaction was "What a loony thing to do?". However, there probably were good reasons behind the decision to not collect caste-related information after the 1931 census. I am just not sure if those reasons still apply.

Right now, 'caste' is a bad word because it is inextricably linked with notions of 'caste discrimination', and 'caste hierarchy'. Naturally, people -- including me -- feel uncomfortable talking about specific castes; we refer to only broad groupings such as Dalits, OBCs, General Category, etc. This is sad, and I hope we will achieve a state where caste is irrelevant.

Note that I said 'irrelevant', not 'abolished'. While getting 'caste' out of the Oxford English Dictionary is a worthy goal, it's just not going to happen. For many, many people, their caste -- and its associated social rituals, customs, traditions -- will continue to be an important part (but still only a small part!) of their identity, and to the extent that castes reflect the diversity of our country, we can accept their reality, all the while working towards extricating them from the nasty things associated with them. Also, I don't see anything great in a caste-free utopia India, in which everyone belongs to a single, smeared-out, homogenized, pasteurized caste called 'Indian'. That would be a boring place indeed.

In a caste-agnostic India, 'caste' would just be another dimension of one's identity, without any connotations of hierarchy. As a crude analogy, consider the US, with its Irish Americans, Italian Americans, African Americans, and yes, Indian Americans; your ethnic background is just that: your ... ethnic ... background. It matters zilch when it comes to issues of public interest. The same goes for religion (and religious subgroups): Jew, Catholic, Hindu, Baptist, Muslim, Seventh Day Adventist, the works. Presidential candidates are open about their religious backgrounds and upbringings. Such a state is far more desirable than a homogenized state with no caste, no religion, no ethnicity, etc.

Make no mistake: as OBCs and SC/STs grow their collective stature, clout and power (socially, economically and politically), we make progress towards the era of caste-irrelevance. That era will be a lot more fun to be in. I won't have to feel uncomfortable about talking about this or that caste. Also, it'll be wonderful to see visiting cards that feature their owners' blog URLs and castes. We are not there yet, but it's something to look forward to.

* * *

Coming back to the current context of reservation, caste is an important criterion (in fact, right now, it's the *only* criterion) that the government seems to want. If so, it's important that the caste-related information is collected and subjected to a dispassionate, scientific analysis. It's also the only way to assess the progress that's made by verious groups of people. Social justice -- in whose name quotas are being implemented -- also demands that we keep track of groups that are still out of the mainstream, even after reservations. Without any caste-based tracking, they may continue to suffer even while all of us begin to claim victory and go home.

So, I say yes to the next census collecting caste-based data.

* * *

Could someone point to some good resources -- preferably, online resources -- on why caste enumeration stopped after the 1931 census, and on why we continue with that policy. Many thanks in advance.

'Stumbling on Happiness' ...

... is the title of a recent book by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of 'hedonistic psychology' at Harvard. From the reviews (NYTimes, Washington Post), it seems like a great book, so I am on the look out for it. In the meantime, here is the link to the first chapter. Just a quick quote from the NYTimes review:

Gilbert is an influential researcher in happiness studies, an interdisciplinary field that has attracted psychologists, economists and other empirically minded researchers, not to mention a lot of interested students. (As The Boston Globe recently reported, a course on "positive psychology" taught by one of Gilbert's colleagues is the most popular course at Harvard.) But from the acknowledgments page forward, it's clear Gilbert also fancies himself a comedian. Uh-oh, cringe alert: an academic who cracks wise. But Gilbert's elbow-in-the-ribs social-science humor is actually funny, at least some of the time. "When we have an experience . . . on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time," he writes. "Psychologists calls this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage."

Here's another quote, this time from this profile of Gilbert in the Toronto Star:

Although we humans have the capacity to imagine what will make us happy lodged in our well-developed frontal lobes, we are not good at it. It's the way we consistently err that fascinates the professor.

His researchers at Harvard interviewed voters before and after recent U.S. elections who said they would be extremely unhappy if George W. Bush won and would likely move to Canada — but who reported after the vote that they feel just fine.

"In prospect it always seems so dire," he says.

* * *

Previous posts that featured Daniel Gilbert: here and here.

A cry for diversity

Given the calcification of ideas at the top, it would be hard to think that there can ever be change. But reservations work here too. One distraught agitator on the Internet said, "There should be reservations for Arjun Singh's job too!"

There actually is. Seats in Parliament and legislative assemblies are reserved for scheduled castes and tribes all over India. And their representatives have succeeded at their jobs. SC and ST legislators vote consistently to fund welfare programmes for their SC and ST constituents, despite political pressures from the upper castes.

The same for women in reserved panchayats. Women pradhans implement policies that increase access to drinking water, primary education and basic health. Policies that 'meritorious' men prefer to ignore.

In study after study, representatives from reserved constituencies debunked the myth that they are incompetent, or puppets of others, or just not capable of handing the pressures of their jobs because they reached there through reservations.

From this Rediff column by Tarun Jain, an economics student at the University of Virginia, who argues strongly for diversity in our institutions -- including the elite ones.

Medical tourism

As word has spread about the high-quality care and cut-rate surgery available in such countries as India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, a growing stream of uninsured and underinsured Americans are boarding planes not for the typical face-lift or tummy tuck but for discount hip replacements and sophisticated heart surgeries. [...] What may accelerate the trend is that some pioneering U.S. corporations ... are taking a serious look at medical outsourcing.

Here is the link to the Time article by Unmesh Kher. [Link via: Mark Thoma].

What is the effect of job quotas on the quality of our government schools?

Professor P.V. Indiresan, ex-Director of IIT-M, has a rambling op-ed in the Business Line; he offers several familiar arguments against reservation. This one, however, is new:

[...] As a natural corollary of the Reservation Principle, teaching posts have been reserved on caste basis. That is a cardinal error. What poor students need most are the best teachers available, not the least qualified. [...]

First of all, by conflating reservation and the failure of our state-run schools, he isn't contributing meaningfully to a discussion on either. Second, while his argument, like those based on 'merit', has a certain appeal to it, it isn't difficult to show that it has very little basis.

Different states in our country have had different experiences with quotas, thus allowing us to check if, and how well, reservation correlates with poor quality of schools. Fortunately, we don't have to look far. Indiresan's article itself contains some:

In the past fifty years, the population of Chennai has increased almost ten times. Yet, many schools run by the City Corporation have been closed for "want of students". In truth, it cannot be that the students, but the quality of teachers selected that was found wanting.

It is a recorded fact that discipline among school teachers has come down. Across the country, half the time teachers are not attending to class work at all. It is a fact that most students in Delhi's Corporation schools cannot do simple arithmetic -- multiply two-digit numbers -- even after five years of education.

I believe his statements about the poor quality and work ethic of teachers are broadly true (but overstated) -- for both Chennai and Delhi, and indeed for most schools across the country. But, Chennai has had a long history of far more aggressive reservation than Delhi, thus debunking the correlation between reservation and poor quality schools/teaching.

* * *

Indiresan's bad analysis need not deter us from examining what ails our state-run schools. Most of us have our own views on this issue; here's my take. Feel free to to add your perspectives in the comments.

Heck, it's not just the schools that have difficulty attracting -- and retaining -- good teachers. This problem persists all the way upto the highest levels: colleges, universities, IITs, and IIMs. (Medical and law colleges don't seem to suffer from this problem, though. I wonder why ...)

The reality of our state-run schools (other than the Kendriya Vidyalayas) is quite well known: crowded classrooms, poor infrastructure, bad working conditions, poor pay, ... It's safe to say that teaching in government schools is not the career of choice for the vast majority of us. Yet, we are fortunate to find many, many competent, committed and inspiring individuals who choose to become teachers. The law of large numbers [er ... our population] continues to come to our help!

Sadly, however, not all the teachers are great. Our employment exchanges select teachers from a vast pool of applicants who span a huge spectrum in terms of competence and commitment. And, inevitably, they select a bunch of teachers who are neither competent nor committed. Further, our system doesn't have a mechanism for kicking anyone out for non-performance. So, the bad teachers, once selected, stick around for several decades, bringing the average quality down.

Here's the main point: our 'system' has -- and will have -- these problems, irrespective of whether the bad teachers are from the general category (GC) or the reserved category (RC).

The remedy isn't hard to guess: make teaching more attractive as a career, and enforce strict standards of accountability. With the former, capable people will choose teaching over other careers, and the latter will help get rid of poor performers. Other measures, such as de-centralizing our school system and giving parents a greater control over schools, are good in principle, but won't work if the system selects (some) bad teachers and isn't able to weed them out.

In pursuing accountability, state governments face significant opposition from the teachers (more specifically, teachers' unions) themselves. Amartya Sen refers to the phenomenon of "friendly fire" in which "these institutions of justice [Sen is referring to unions here ;-) ] seem to work largely against justice through their inaction -- or worse -- when faced with teacher absenteeism and other irresponsibilities".

Thus, the broad goal of 'improving our schools' takes us face to face with problems such as the above. These are real, hard problems that can be addressed only through popular awareness and political will. Instead of contributing to solving real problems, Indiresan has, sadly, chosen to foist on us a bogus problem that conflates reservation and poor quality of our schools.

Sigh.

Dependable software

The latest issue of Scientific American carries an excellent article about software that is designed to be dependable. It starts with something that the magazine talked about over a dozen years ago: the Denver Airport!

An architectural marvel when it opened 11 years ago, the new Denver International Airport's high-tech jewel was to be its automated baggage handler. It would autonomously route luggage around 26 miles of conveyors for rapid, seamless delivery to planes and passengers. But software problems dogged the system, delaying the airport's opening by 16 months and adding hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns. Despite years of tweaking, it never ran reliably. Last summer airport managers finally pulled the plug--reverting to traditional manually loaded baggage carts and tugs with human drivers. The mechanized handler's designer, BAE Automated Systems, was liquidated, and United Airlines, its principal user, slipped into bankruptcy, in part because of the mess.

Yogendra Yadav and Satish Deshpande have an affirmative action plan

In the Hindu: Part 1 and Part 2.

This effort is similar to the one by Purushottam Agrawal, that I linked to here.

Yadav and Deshpande are to be congratulated for taking the debate forward to a territory that lies beyond absolutist positions that argue, on one side, for zero percent reservations, and on the other side, for reservations that are based only on caste without any provision for creamy layer (statistics be damned, and through an ordinance if necessary!). There is a lot of nuance in their articles, and I hope to say some more about their specific proposal later.

For the moment, however, let me just quote this curious paragraph from their article:

The scheme we propose here is a modified version of one that was designed for the selection process of a well-known international fellowship programme for higher education, where it was successful for some years. Thousands of applications have already been screened using this scheme. A similar scheme has been used for admissions to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The working of this scheme does not seem to offer any insurmountable operational difficulties, despite the vast expansion in scale that some contexts might involve. [with bold emphasis added by me]

Now, does anyone have more information about the JNU scheme? Thanks in advance for any pointers (preferably online).

Huge endowments ...

Last February, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) announced the completion of "the most successful fund-raising campaign in the history of higher education, generating more than $3 billion"!

Campaign UCLA secured funding used to support cutting-edge research, provide student scholarships and fellowships, attract and retain top scholars in a wide range of academic disciplines, and enhance classroom, laboratory, health care and other facilities. The campaign benefited all sectors of UCLA — from the College of Letters and Science to the 11 professional schools, from physical and life sciences to social sciences and humanities, from law and medicine to engineering and the arts, and from libraries to UCLA Extension.

Now, Columbia University is getting ready to launch an even bigger campaign, whose goal is to raise $4 billion! Not just that, this NYTimes report starts with two other ambitious fund-raising efforts:

The University of Virginia will announce a $3 billion fund-raising drive in the fall. New York University is in the middle of a $2.5 billion campaign.

Note that at least two of the institutions are public universities. And, of course, the mother of them all, Harvard, has an endowment whose corpus exceeds $25 billion.

In a post back in November of 2005, I wrote:

I am sure there are still many people who would be willing to donate big money to the corpus funds of higher ed institutions -- IIMs and IITs in particular. A corpus of some 1000 crore (10 billion) rupees should be quite easy to build in a short time for an IIT if it makes a concerted effort; such a corpus would help it become financially independent. In principle, the government can either reduce or even stop its funding of those institutions with big corpus funds, and use the money thus saved to create new IITs, IIMs and so on.

This grouse is still valid. I am sure there are tons of people who would be willing to donate to our universities, colleges and institutions. I am also sure that some of the contributions are likely to be quite big. While our private institutions (including those run by charitable trusts) make an effort to raise funds [not much data is available in the public domain, though], our public institutions are prevented from building their corpus funds to beyond a certain limit which, for IITs (for example), is Rs. 100 crores -- about $22 million.

This is a big opportunity that our society is missing out on.

Hey, what happened to the thought experiment?

Remember this little experiment? It's time to look at the results.

First of all, I thank all the participants for 'voting', and the verdict (from an admittedly small, un-representative and self-selecting voters) is clear: being an also-ran (academically speaking) in an elite institution (one of the IITs in that post) is preferable to doing well in a second rung college.

The 'voters' have also provided some good reasons for choosing the elite institutions: infrastructure, exposure, brand image, networking with alumni, etc. Several commenters opined that prior investment and hard work -- and the exhilaration on getting through JEE -- are good enough to choose the IIT option. The discussion there is absolutely great, so go read it.

Here's my own response to the question, which I had written up at the time of writing that post:

In our country, IITs have a special place, a special status (so do AIIMS, NLSUI, and other such elite institutions). If you get into to one of them, you know you have 'arrived'. So what is so special about the IITs? They give you access to some of the best minds: both faculty and students. You are taught by active researchers. Your class mates and you have a high probability of landing great, challenging jobs. Even if your career is not all that great, you will have personal friends with high-flying careers. This network of high flyers is available to you on tap. Anytime you need it. Also, since getting into an IIT is recognized as a great achievement, you benefit from the social 'bhav' you receive from your extended family, neighbours, friends (and this 'social' benefit lasts a long time, indeed!). Finally, the IIT card opens many doors for you.

My response has much in common with those of the commenters: academic excellence, brand equity, network of peers and seniors, open doors and opportunities, and enhanced self-esteem.

* * *

So, what the hell was the point of that experiment? Well, in a terribly written screed by Prof. P.V. Indiresan, ex-Director of IIT-M, I found this paragraph:

As one correspondent has pointed out, reservation is like declaring a boundary scored in a cricket game as a six if hit by a backward caste player. Such artificial boost appears beneficial. It may not be. As one SC student remarked: "I won a degree in the IIT but lost my self-image." How many students would have done better with their lives if they had been exposed to what they can master, instead of being subjected to a difficult drill for which they were not trained, we do not know.

I am now going to ask you to forget the casteist overtones in the paragraph. Forget also the fact that his article is about reservation (two of the commenters -- barbarindian and cipher -- can breathe easy now, and continue to hold on to their absolutist views against reservation ;-). Stripped of all these considerations, Indiresan's algorithm for choosing an institution is:

Since you are less likely to do well in a top tier institution than in a second tier one, you must choose the latter.

To me, this sounded totally wrong! Loony, even. I was going to write a solid rant on how Indiresan was peddling wrong sort of advice, but decided against it. Instead, I decided on the 'experiment' and the accompanying 'mini-poll' that pits my view against that of the mighty Prof. Indiresan. I am glad that I beat him in a near land-slide!

This is what would be called 'Proof by Majority'. In the best traditions of social un-scientific analysis, I will choose to ignore the non-random, self-selecting nature of the voting population!

Parables, case studies and management theory

Some of my friends with an MBA are going to be angry that I am linking to this article by Matthew Stuart. On the other hand some others -- with or without an MBA degree -- will be grateful for it. In any event, this is one article that you must read, just for the vigour with which Stewart debunks critiques management theory -- and has loads of fun while doing it. Here's an extract:

The thing that makes modern management theory so painful to read isn't usually the dearth of reliable empirical data. It's that maddening papal infallibility. Oh sure, there are a few pearls of insight, and one or two stories about hero-CEOs that can hook you like bad popcorn. But the rest is just inane. Those who looked for the true meaning of "business process re-engineering", the most overtly Taylorist of recent management fads, were ultimately rewarded with such gems of vacuity as "BPR is taking a blank sheet of paper to your business!" and "BPR means re-thinking everything, everything!".

Each new fad calls attention to one virtue or another - first it's efficiency, then quality, next it's customer satisfaction, then supplier satisfaction, then self-satisfaction, and finally, at some point, it's efficiency all over again. If it's reminiscent of the kind of toothless wisdom offered in self-help literature, that's because management theory is mostly a subgenre of self-help. Which isn't to say it's completely useless. But just as most people are able to lead fulfilling lives without consulting Deepak Chopra, most managers can probably spare themselves an education in management theory.

These people need some psychological help ...

This story in Zee News (based on Bureau reports) is bizarre:

A group of students from IIT, Delhi have submitted a memorandum to President seeking permission to commit suicide if reservation to OBCs in elite educational institutions is implemented.

These students need some serious help.

Faculty crunch at IIMs, IITs

The shortage is most acute in IIT Roorkee, which has a sanctioned strength of 575 faculty, though only 345 faculty members are in position.

IIT Delhi faces a 28% shortage: of the sanctioned strength of 583, only 418 are in position. IIT Guwahati has the best figures and faces a shortage of only five faculty members.

From this report. This takes on an urgency because the government is mulling the possibility of increasing the intake this year by almost 50%, so as to 'protect' the number of general quota seats from being eroded by reservation.

At the IIMs, the faculty shortage is pegged at about 8%. The inability of IITs to attract quality faculty is something that I understand (I think ...); the salary, start-up grants, lab facilities, teaching load (particularly for junior faculty) are some of the deterrents, which make prospective candidates think of other places which treat them better on these parameters (except, of course, the salary, which is fixed by the government).

Since I am not familiar with the IIMs, I am not able to comment on the shortage there. However, I understand that consulting is encouraged in IIMs, and consulting and EDPs (Executive Development Programs) can be quite lucrative. A recent report in the Economic Times covered this aspect of being on the IIM faculty:

[...] Under the Fifth Pay Commission, the entry-level salary of an assistant professor at IIM-A is Rs 12,000 a month while the maximum salary of a professor is Rs 22,400 per month.

But one area where the faculty end up making Rs 23 lakh per annum alone is consulting with private or government firms. This includes consulting done under two slabs. First, the faculty can do consulting worth Rs 6 lakh which they do not have to share with the institute, and is called ‘free allowance’ . Once the Rs 6-lakh mark is reached, the faculty is allowed an additional 52 hours of consulting a year — at Rs 75,000 an hour — 50 per cent of which is shared with the institute.

BTW, isn't there an error (and possibly two) in the last sentence?

Bizarre

That's the only word that comes to my mind when I read some of the reasons given for restricting the entry of foreign universities into India. Of course, there's nothing official about them!

Indian universities are inadequately equipped to handle foreign competition and so they should only be allowed in areas where we have no expertise.

The move to allow foreign universities is likely to create a further crunch on the already fund starved universities, if they lose the best of their human resource pool. “There is some very good quality teaching and teachers to be found in Indian universities,” the expert said.

I can't believe our 'experts' and 'senior members of the Planning Commission' actually entertain such utterly loser-type notions.

BPS Research Digest

I subscribed to the blog BPS Research Digest (BPS = British Psychological Society) some six months ago; ever since then, I have been meaning to post a link here, but never got around to it. Now that they have made an explicit request that we spread the word, here it is.

If you are interested in some of the really interesting psychology research, BPS Digest is the place for you. The research findings are summarized in simple language, with links to semi-popular and scholarly articles that you can consult if you want to dig deeper.

Here are some of the recent posts that I had bookmarked:

The power of prayer ... to harm you!

Be creative: Don't even think about it.

Are you a grumpy maximizer or a happy satisficer?

Self-discipline matters more than IQ

How being ill can be good for you.

The dark side of the American dream?

All but the first two are on one of my pet topics: Happiness! Specifically, positive psychology.