At a time when India implements reservation in higher education and government jobs, a working paper by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad questions the need for 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC).
The paper feels that greater focus on school education will translate into greater participation in higher education and reduce need for reservation.
The paper titled Who Participates in Higher Education in India? Rethinking the Role of Affirmative Action has been prepared by Prof Rakesh Basant of the faculty of Economics at IIMA and Gitanjali Sen, fellow at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
The paper finds that there is no need for 27% OBC reservation provided participation share in the age group of 17 to 29 years (eligible for higher education in OBC) is as good as other socio-religious groups like Hindu upper caste, Hindu SC, Hindu ST and Muslim OBCs.
The paper states that among other things, the policy of reservation in higher education is based on the premise that participation of persons from the reserved category has been uniformly low and reservation would result in a significant rise in participation.
The paper analysed the National Sample Survey data of seven different socio-religious groups in three different categories-total population of the socio-religious groups, share of graduates and higher educated in the age group 22-35 years, and share of currently studying persons at the level of graduation and above in the age group of 17- 29 years.
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