HYDERABAD, India — Rajesh, a 31-year-old banker, and Ganesh, a 20-year-old engineering student, did something here recently that was banned in other parts of the country until this past Saturday when they both went to see “Aarakshan,” a controversial movie about the contentious class-based quota system in India’s institutions of higher learning.
Both men also have something else in common that is highly relevant to the brouhaha sweltering around “Aarakshan”: Their college education was both directly impacted by the quota system dealt with in the briefly-banned movie, although in divergent ways.
In short, the quota system kept Rajesh out of the college of his choice and ushered Ganesh into the university of his choice.
Ironically, both men say they dislike the Indian quota system, even though the latter benefited from it personally and will probably do so again in the future.
In many ways, the stories of Rajesh and Ganesh show that India’s disposition toward class-based quotas in higher education in India is much like the United States’ own uneasiness and conflicted views toward race-conscious affirmative action in higher education.
Recall the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing the majority opinion for Grutter v. Bollinger, otherwise known as the Michigan Law School affirmative action case, when she said: “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”
If the United States has 17 years before it scraps race-conscious affirmative action in higher education altogether, then it is a small wonder that India, while much older as a society but much younger than the United States as a democracy, finds itself wrestling with the role that preferences should play in bringing about parity in higher education. This is particularly poignant in the context of a caste-based system that extends far back into Indian social history.
