This follows up my previous article on  OBC reservation:
I am here quoting the views of Prof. M Balakrishnan, a computer science professor at 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@...)

5, Taxila Apartments

IIT Delhi Campus,

New Delhi - 110016   

professor at IIT Delhi.