Impact of Reservations in Higher Education: The Case of Other Backward Classes

Abstract

Affirmative action, in terms of positive discrimination has been in place in India for a long period. The 93rd amendment of the constitution of India makes it mandatory to reserve a maximum of fifty per cent seats to persons belonging to the Schedules Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) in the state and centrally funded institutions of higher education. Although, the quota for SCs and STs exists from the beginning of state formation; the quota for OBCs started much later in 2008. Since then, this issue has cropped up very frequently discussing whether the percentages reserved for OBCs in institutions of higher education actually underrepresent or overrepresent the actual OBC population; or sometimes on uniformity across states of India over the list of castes belonging to the OBC category. Since this list of castes designated as OBCs are prepared at the state level, certain caste are scheduled as OBCs for the purpose of central government jobs, but not listed as OBCs in state government lists. However, the issues in implementation is just one layer of the problem. Another issue is whether such policy is actually contributing to compromised academic quality. It is also known that the primary argument for this kind of ‘positive discrimination’ through quota for a certain historically disadvantaged section of society is to encourage higher educational participation. There are studies which show that participation of backward classes has actually increased over years. But those do not have the scope of testing whether that increase can be called as an effect of ‘positive discrimination’ policy. This paper tests that argument beyond the simple comparison of cross - section data to comparison across years by setting up a natural experiment. This paper proposes to measure the effects of reservation of seats at institutions of higher education across the country using the National Sample Survey data.