OBC Reservations: An IIT Faculty Member’s View
Prof. M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi

Nearly six decades after independence, this country is
planning to announce that majority of its population
is backward and does not have equal opportunity to
pursue education and employment. Along with this, it
is going to open up a Pandora’s Box by various caste
groups to be classified as “backward”. What an
interesting way to begin the 21st century when finally
India was beginning to emerge as a serious player in
the new knowledge economy! The major carrot that is
being doled out is the seats in the elite medical,
engineering and management Institutes. What bothers me
is no one is interested in even consulting the people
who have built these Institutions and brought them to
this stature. I have strong views on efficacy of
reservations in general but here I would confine
myself to the issues concerning IITs. At least here
with my three decade long association, I can claim to
know something. Many of these arguments may be
applicable to the other elite Institutions in medical
and management disciplines as well.

Today IITs are considered excellent educational
institutions. There is a countrywide scramble to get
into these with many students spending the best part
of their teen years in preparing for its entrance
examinations. This should not be confused with ranking
of universities where just a couple of IITs make it in
the top 500. These rankings deal primarily with the
research output and not with the quality of
undergraduate education. I can confidently say that
any ranking of quality of undergraduate engineers
produced would put IITs in the top 20 worldwide if not
in the top 10. And it is this achievement that is
going to be hard to maintain with the proposed
reservations policy. Before we go any further, it
would be best to examine how this excellence has been
achieved.

The fundamental contribution that the Central
Government has made to these institutions is in
generous funding (by Indian, not global standards)
combined with unmatched autonomy. The main point of
engagement between the Government and these
Institutions has been through the appointment of
Directors. Except for a brief period during the last
administration, the Governments had refrained from any
major politicking in these appointments. They have by
and large appointed the best available applicant
Professor from the same or another IIT for the job.
These venerable people had themselves a great pride in
these Institutions and have ran the Institutes with
the best of their abilities (maybe not always
efficiently but always fairly) without major vested
interest.

For someone outside IITs to understand the power of
this position is not easy. The Director virtually
appoints the complete senior administration including
the deputy directors and deans, chairs all the faculty
selections including that for the Professors, is the
chairman of the senate and thus the academic head, is
the financial head and also the administrative head.
For most people living in the campus, which includes
90% of faculty and students, he is also the chairman
of the local municipality (all major complaints on
water, electricity, sewage etc. would reach him). This
ensures that the buck almost always stops with him and
thus decision making is unavoidable. This autonomy
that has been the hallmark of these institutions is
being eroded. There were attempts in the last
Government (fortunately not vigorously pursued) to
tell IITs what to teach. The present decision would
strike at the fundamentals of IITs as the Government
no longer feels whom to teach and how many to teach is
best decided by these Institutions themselves. This in
my opinion is the most dangerous fallout as it strikes
at the very core of the success of these Institutions.
Once the lines of control gets blurred, there would be
no stopping, as today’s political functioning is
clearly not dictated by long term vision. Soon we
could have reservations in faculty and create a caste
based patronage system which has destroyed many of the
once excellent state universities.

In IITs, the faculty selected and promoted solely
based on merit has maintained a high standard of
ethical behavior, have taken their teaching and
research seriously, refrained from politicking
themselves and supported the Institute in many ways to
fulfill its commitments. Who are these faculty
members? A large number are our own alumni
(undergraduates as well as postgraduates), majority of
them have studied or conducted research in the west
and almost all of them have had opportunities of
pursuing financially much more lucrative careers in
India and abroad. Thus each faculty member is here by
choice and he/she has exercised that choice with one
major attraction - opportunity to teach, interact and
work with extremely bright students perhaps unmatched
anywhere. It is this attraction that is being tampered
with. In a situation where all IITs are short of
faculty and desperately trying to innovate to attract
faculty under the constraints of the pay commission
dictated salaries (while competing with Sensex based
salaries), this is not a pleasant development.

IITs have had reservations for SC/STs for decades. Why
would this be different? Aren’t these students likely
to be better prepared than the students admitted under
the existing reserved category? Here I would like to
share some of the facts with the readers. IITs have
been admitting SC/ST students for years under two
modes. From the general category, a significantly
lower JEE cutoff is decided and reserved category
students scoring above this cutoff are admitted
directly to the UG programmes. Another still lower
cutoff is decided and reserved category students from
this set are admitted to a one year preparatory course
conducted by IITs themselves. After passing this
course, they can join the programmes without having to
appear in JEE again. Even this exercise collectively
yields less than 15% in IIT Delhi though the quota
amounts to nearly 22.5%. Half of the reserved
category students manage to clear courses comfortably
while the other half struggle on the margins. What
would be called a good performance (cumulative grade
point average or CGPA of 8 and above) and is achieved
by nearly forty percent of general category students,
is rare and occurs once in many years among the
reserved category students. It is not that all general
category students do well. There is nearly a 5%
“dropout” rate even among them which is a cause of
concern but mainly attributed to the burnout due to
JEE preparation phase. The “dropout” students have no
effect on teaching as they neither are regular nor
make their presence felt in classes. The remaining
part of weak students is too small and at present
hardly any instructor would pitch his / her course at
that level. On the other hand, the present policy may
introduce a large band of weak students which no
instructor can ignore. This would definitely result in
drop in the quality of education. It is the hypocrisy
of the highest order that on one hand the reservation
for SC/STs is considered a success and quoted for
extension to OBCs, and on the other hand, no hard data
on the performance of these students is available in
the public domain. Some administrators I talked to
consider this data as sensitive! Analysis of where the
reserved category students go after graduation would
be enlightening. I do not have the sensitive data but
my experience shows that most of them either go to
services like IAS/IES or to the public sector
companies. Normally this choice of careers by IIT
graduates should be a matter of satisfaction except
that both these entries are again using the
reservation quota. Is it empowerment or crutches for
life?

In this whole episode, the most stunning news for me
was when the Hon’ble minister announced increase in
intake to compensate for the reservations. This would
amount to nearly 56% overall increase in undergraduate
intake in the IITs. This showed complete ignorance of
what makes IIT undergraduate education tick. There are
few Institutions in the world where undergraduate
students get to interact one to one and so freely with
such high-caliber faculty. Students are advised on
courses in small groups, interact over hostel dinners,
go on industrial trips and finally carry out a well
supervised project. Every undergraduate student does
an intensive “novel” project either individually or in
groups of two and he/she is effectively “supervised”
by a faculty member. Many of them result in
publications. This system evolved when the
student-faculty ratio was 6:1 and is getting strained
at the seams when it has reached 12:1. In some
disciplines like Computer Sciences and Electrical
Engineering where market competition is heavy, it has
already gone to 20:1 and above. Though currently
producing excellent results, it is a highly
non-scalable mechanism. Intake increase on this scale,
when effectively faculty strengths in key areas are
decreasing could sound a death-knell to one of our few
international brand names.

I have a poser for Prof. Jayati Ghosh, my well
renowned colleague from JNU and a member of the
knowledge commission. She has justified reservations
in IITs based on the poor ranking of IITs
internationally. Her argument is anyway these
Institutions are not great, why they should crib about
the quality of intake. She nowhere states that any of
the 400+ odd Institutions worldwide which are ranked
above IITs have achieved their status through
reservations. In that case all Tamil Nadu Engineering
Colleges with 69% reservation for decades (openly
defying the Supreme Court suggested norm of 50%) now
should be at the top.

Postscript: Finally, I would like to seek opinion on
the composition of our next Olympics team. We have
admittedly done much poorer in sports than education.
Should our next Olympics team be chosen on caste basis
or perhaps with adequate representation to athletes
aged 40+ who are at present completely unrepresented?
After all we do not have much to lose as we only win
one bronze medal in alternate Olympics. I would no
longer be surprised if some future Sports Minister
considers caste based quotas for our national cricket
team. After all that would be worth a few votes and
the nation would have been well prepared by then to
cheer only for its own caste brethren!

The author is a Professor of Computer Science &
Engineering at IIT Delhi. He has been with IIT Delhi
since 1977 except for a three year stint outside
India. Currently he is on Sabbatical and working with
a startup. The views represented here are completely
his own.
M. Balakrishnan (mbala@cse.iitd.ac.in)
5, Taxila Apartments
IIT Delhi Campus,
New Delhi - 110016

I got this message from one of my friends - and wanted
to share it with you all.
read it complete, its very interesting………

I completely support the PM and all the politicians
for promoting Reservations. Let’s start the
reservation with our cricket team. We should have 10
percent reservation for Muslims. 30 percent for OBC,
SC/ST like that. Cricket rules should be modified
accordingly. The boundary circle should be reduced for
an SC/ST player. The four hit by an OBC player should
be considered as a six and a six hit by a OBC player
should be counted as 8 runs. An OBC player scoring 60
runs should be declared as a century. We should
influence ICC and make rules so that the pace bowlers
like Shoaib aktar should not bowl fast balls to our
OBC player. Bowlers should bowl maximum speed of 80
kilometer per hour to an OBC player. Any delivery
above this speed should be made illegal.

Also we should have reservation in Olympics. In the
100 meters race, an OBC player should be given a gold
medal if he runs 80 meters.

There can be reservation in Government jobs also.
Let’s recruit SC/ST and OBC pilots for aircrafts which
are carrying the ministers and politicians (that can
really help the country.. )

Ensure that only SC/ST and OBC doctors do the
operations for the ministers and other politicians.
(Another way of saving the country..)

Let’s be creative and think of ways and means to guide
INDIA forward.
Let’s show the world that INDIA is a GREAT country.
Let’s be proud of being an INDIAN..

May the good breed of politicians like ARJUN SINGH
long live.

17 January Mig 21 crash Jamnagar Gujarat.
17 March Suryakiran 3
Last year 10 plane crash Including four mig 21.

We live and prosper in a very exciting era of aviation. Many young men and women dream of becoming pilots. It was no surprise to learn that even the President of India A P J Abdul Kalam had a keen desire to become an air force pilot when he was young. Of course, it’s another story that he is actually occupying the captain’s seat of our nation today!

Amongst the three wings of armed forces, the air force is the youngest service. It is one of the visibly glamorous forces because of its high-flying airplanes, smart-looking pilots, adventurous life-style, colourful fly-pasts and the the daredevilry of Suryakirans doing aerobatics. So it’s only natural that our hearts go aflutter when we talk of Indian Air Force.

It would be appropriate to acknowledge that the air force pilot is the first man who steps into combat and for whom it’s a continuous but undeclared and daily battle, every time the cockpit canopy is shut and the throttle is opened for the take-off.

It is also a day of pledge. Pledging ourselves to strengthen the hands and the will of our defence forces. This is what the Abhijit Air Safety Foundation(AASF), are involved in doing today. It’s not something we wanted to do but the inept system forced them to undertake this as a national cause.

Plane crashes are not due to incompetencies of pilots but due to incompetencies of the authorities who turn the blind eye towards the fact that all these killing air-machines old & obsolete & shouldn’t be flown at all.

On a moonless night of September 17, 2001, a young pilot sat in the cockpit of an old MiG-21 aircraft, poised for take-off on a mission seemingly routine. In a roar, he was off the ground to lead another young colleague in a mock combat. But within 33 seconds, Mother Earth took the lad into her embrace forever, this time!

There was neither a forewarning nor was there any time for the farewell. On that fateful moment, witnessed only by the mute and dark desert of Rajasthan, our world stopped spinning in faraway Mumbai.

Abhijit Air Safety Foundation (AASF) was thus born. Our son Abhijit’s dream of joining the defence forces was fulfilled on December 21, 1996, at the Parade Grounds of Air Force Academy in Hyderabad. Five years later, death snatched him away from us.
The loss of young and brave pilots in MiG-21 aircraft of the Indian Air Force, by a bleak irony, has almost ceased to be news, due to its sickening regularity. There are, at last count, more than 158 heaps of charred remains of MiG-21 aircraft on their premature last flight.

Some of them were not even spared in their deaths as their coffins carried, ‘Pilot Error’ stamp upon them. Many of the enlightened, educated and duty-conscious parents did ask how and why their young lads became the victim of MiG-21. But the IAF and the Government in their classic colonial hangover only hid behind the mask of secrecy.

Knowing that the individuals cannot force monolithic Government organisations to respond, we had to unite to form a large body of people who have suffered like us or would like to help us in our endeavor. Only then, the AASF could act as a pressure group.

Public concern and an undercurrent of the feeling of unease about the MiG aircraft and its pilots was already building up. Our movement provided a sharp focus and a rallying point to it with electronic and print media spotlighting our campaign to the national level.

Soon after a MiG-21 crash, the media would approach us for our reaction and comments. Unfortunately, these reports only made the IAF go into an aggressive defensive posturing.

Our press conference and a well-publicised but unplanned event of handing over a petition to Defence Minister George Fernandes drew enough public
attention and support for our cause.

On August 5, 2003, the AASF met President A P J Abdul Kalam, the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces and petitioned him for his intervention. He received us with the great courtesy and understanding. He made us proud by calling us an ‘Air Force Family’ and showed great interest in understanding what the nature of our cause was.

Kalam assured us that the air safety aspect within the Air Force and specifically the MiG fleet, was receiving the highest attention and that there will be positive ascent shown soon.

The Government’s decision for finally initiating the process for acquisition of the Advanced Jet Trainers soon after was the direct fallout of the President's assurance to the AASF.

(As told to Michael Gonsalves, former editor of The Free Press Journal, Mumbai and Maharashtra Herald, Pune)

Its really great to hear that America's oldest institution of higher learning, Harvard University, will soon have India as a subject. And teachers will include visiting faculty members like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Gardiner professor of history at Harvard Sugata Bose and Harvard Business School professor Tarun Khanna.

In an exclusive interview to TOI , Harvard University’s outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, said: “Like people study political science, culture, public health, economics, law and medicine, students in Harvard will now study India as a subject.”
“We are working hard towards building a programme especially on India, the subcontinent and South Asia studies. We want to strengthen and increase our knowledge the country, which is fast becoming a super-power.”

Summers is a renowned economist who was the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton.
In Delhi after having travelled to Rajasthan and Agra, Summers '" who will deliver the Golden Jubilee celebration lecture of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Wednesday '" said he would discuss with his peers on his return to US about India's tremendous emergence as an economic power.

Summers will also seek ways to deepen the connection between Harvard and Indian universities.