Fake Merit-Reservation Binary Inquiry

Recent decision of Supreme Court of India on All India Quota It deserves more attention for reasons other than its impact on postgraduate medical admissions. This verdict has the potential to settle a long, fragmented and fruitless debate in our country: merit versus reservation. Order of a two-judge bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice AS Bopanna, pacifies a popular misconception of merit by advancing an interpretation consistent with our constitutional ideals of equality and social justice. The decision should have far-reaching consequences for judicial orders, public policy and, hopefully, public discourse.

limited case

The matter before the Court was very limited: Prompt resolution of issues surrounding the implementation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quotas in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET)-All India Quota (AIQ). Admission in Medical Colleges. AIQ refers to a judicially created category where 15% of undergraduate seats and 50% of post-graduate seats are filled on a domicile-free, all-India basis.

editorial | False Dualism: On Merit vs. Reservation

The government had recently decided to extend the existing SC and ST reservation within this category to the OBC reservation as well. The writ petitions had challenged this order on the ground that the introduction of OBC reservation would affect professional qualifications and would adversely discriminate against the general category candidates. Another set of writ petitions had challenged the notification of EWS reservation while the hearing on the 103rd Constitutional Amendment Act was pending. Another set of writ petitions had challenged the period of ₹8 lakh as income limit for EWS reservation. The Court, considering the public health implications of delaying medical admissions, upheld the admission notice, and listed it for hearing on the validity of the 8 lakh limit for March.

fresh land

The Court took this opportunity to address the issue of merit versus reservation to some extent directly (paragraphs 17 to 28). Critics of affirmative action have long argued that reservations violate merit. Reservation defenders also often acknowledge this but argue that affirmative action serves other goals, such as social representation. It is here that the written judgment by Justice Chandrachud breaks new ground. It builds on a long tradition of progressive jurisprudence on this issue, but takes it in a new direction.

The decision begins by recalling and reaffirming the principle of real equality, rather than formal equality, that underpins our constitutional promise of equality of opportunity. Relying on the arguments in the Constituent Assembly, the Court reminds us that the intention of the Makers was to remove the real structural barriers that prevented the realization of equality of opportunity. Courts build on historical cases such as State of Kerala vs NM Thomas, KC Vasant Kumar (1985)And Indira Sawhney vs Union of India (1992) The provision of reservation in Article 16(4) of the Constitution is not an exception, but an extension of the principle of equality enunciated in Article 16(1). Reservation is vital to achieve the aspirational goal of genuine equality of opportunity and status among all citizens. Reservation is one of the ways to remove these hurdles. Individual differences may be the result of privilege, luck or circumstances but cannot be used to negate the role of reservation in redressing the structural disadvantages caused to certain groups’ (paragraph 22).

editorial | Quotas without data: on reservation policies

Second, judgment contributes to the specification of the mechanisms through which social privileges function. Justice Chinnappa Reddy KC Vasanth Kumar Vs State of Karnataka (1985) The purely economic understanding of reservation claims was criticized by emphasizing the inherent and rigid nature of the socio-cultural institution of caste.

The current order notes Mark Gallanter’s insight that the processes of resource accumulation affect the performance of candidates in examinations. Taking this understanding further, it recognizes the work of KV Shyamprasad, perhaps for the first time, the role of cultural capital. The order said: ‘Cultural capital ensures that a child is trained unintentionally from the family environment to suit his family’s position in higher education or higher positions. It works to the detriment of individuals who are first generation learners and come from communities whose traditional occupations result in not communicating the necessary skills needed to perform well in open exams…’ (paragraph 24) ) The decision also takes into account that the exclusionary implications of this process as meritocratic discourse legitimize the consolidation of ‘family housing, community interaction, and inherited skills’. In addition to ‘affirming social hierarchies’, this obsession with marks in an examination serves to ‘denigrate the dignity of those who face obstacles in their advancement that are not their own’ (paragraphs 24-25 ).

Stereotypes and Skills

Third, it highlights social biases that emerge in the form of concerns about ‘efficiency of administration’ and concerns about dilution of competency. It believes that prejudicial stereotypes about the skills of individuals belonging to weaker sections need to be corrected.

editorial | Reservation as a Right: On Supreme Court’s Judgment

It depends on the decision of 2019 BK Pavitra Vs State of Karnataka, also written by Justice Chandrachud, which observed, ‘The benchmark for the efficiency of administration is not some disjointed, abstract ideal as measured by the performance of an eligible open category candidate. The efficiency of administration in the affairs of the Union or the State should be defined in an inclusive sense, where diverse sections of society are represented by the people and for the people as the true aspiration of governance.’

Exam and Qualification

In the end, the judgment gets to the bottom of the matter and questions examinations as a measure of merit. It cites Ashwini Deshpande’s study, which highlights a clear separation between what tests claim to measure and what they actually do. It elaborates by citing the research of Satish Deshpande which shows that there is often an indirect and weak link to the measures of the exam which a candidate must undertake. They argue that the prestige of competitive entrance examinations and the impenetrability of its evaluator standards are a constructed construct. Satish Deshpande calls these examinations ‘painful bloodshed’ which are done to protect the social prestige of the professional class.

Thus, Deshpande concludes that if the examinations are any less ruthless, his main social task of persuading ‘the vast majority of aspirants to consent to their exclusion’ would be hampered. Considering this, the judgment states that the test ‘may reflect only the present potential of an individual, but not the gamut of their potential, abilities or excellence’. Advocating the importance of individual character, lived experiences and subsequent training, the decision emphasizes that examinations are excluded, though convenient, methods of resource allocation and that our constitutional ideals regarding these processes (paragraph 25) I must inform our cautious appreciation.

This critique of the widespread misconception about merit – the common understanding of the upper caste elite – could have far-reaching consequences.

The claims of adverse discrimination by candidates belonging to the unreserved category should be justified under the paradigm of true equality. This implies that a crude disparity in cut-off marks will not be considered in isolation of the structural disparities created by the competitive examination. It invites a harsh judicial review of the constitutionality of EWS reservation as it ignores the role of cultural capital for the general category EWS candidates and imposes equal income ceiling for ‘creamy layer’ OBCs and EWS. In the policy area, this decision opens the way for designing examinations that are free from linguistic, classroom, school board and regional bias. Justice AK Rajan’s report on NEET, cited in the judgment, could be a possible blueprint for democratizing access to higher education. Recognition of social privileges hidden behind merit also reinforces the demand for caste census which can document the dynamics of privilege accumulation and against elite and conservative policy demands for upper caste commissions (or commissions for unreserved classes) and Brahmin schemes. Caution can be taken, which are flourishing in our country. political landscape.

Is it too much to hope that this argument – written in the language and style preferred by our elite – comes from the country’s highest court in the eyes of our upper-caste opinion-makers of inherited caste privileges Will it be open to reality which is excused as merit? Will it spark complacent and condescending drawing-room conversations about “reserved category”?

Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Swaraj India and Jai Kisan Andolan. Pranav Dhawan is a final year student at National Law School of India University, Bengaluru