OBCs are better, says report

A study for Oversight panel shows OBCs perform better than general, SC/ST students, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Oct 13, 2006, 03:08:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Studies conducted for the Oversight Committee show that the OBC students are best performers at the college level examinations - outsmarting both general category and SC/ST students.

The studies were conducted in the four southern states having reservation in the higher education for OBC for many years.

A study conduced by Dr NR Shetty says that performance of OBC students, if they get admission in professional colleges, is better than general category students. To reach the conclusion, the study compared examination results of different category of students in the engineering stream.

Negating the popular notion that reservation can degrade the quality of education in elite institutions like IITs and IIMs, Reddy quotes data to show introduction of reservation does not impact merit of the institutions in any way.

"There does not seem to be any reduction or loss of performance due to introduction of OBC candidates," the report states.

The report also states that given a chance even 'so-called backward classes' can also perform and in some cases even better than general category students. For this, the most important resource is quality of faculty and it should be borne in mind while exercising the option of expansion, the report says.

The second study conducted by Centre for Management Development gives fact-based reply on a more pertinent issue of excluding creamy layer from ambit of reservation. It inferred that if creamy layer is included in the reservation regime, only the richer OBC would reap the benefit while the poor ones will remain in shackles.

For this, the state of Kerala was chosen as the concept of creamy layer was introduced there much before the Central Government implemented it for reservation in jobs in 1993.

Analysis of data showed that majority of students from all backward classes, except Christians, got admission in the professional colleges through the merit route rather than reservation.

It shows that when creamy layer is included in reservation the economically sound reap the maximum benefit and not poor backward class students, the report states.

The third study was conducted in the state of Tamil Nadu, which has highest reservation of 69 per cent. Dr M Anandakrishnan, chairman of IIT Madras, did the research and reiterated that quality of education is not diluted with introduction of reservation for the weaker sections. Results of various entrance examinations and final examinations of professional courses were examined.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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