HRD Ministry hikes seats for EWS students but  educational institutions are clearly not ready

Now that the ten per cent quota for the economically backward sections of society, irrespective of caste and class markers, is law, the grandeur of announcement and the idealism of ensuring a just social order have made way for the practicalities of implementation. But much like the law, which saw the light of day without much deliberation, the NDA government is on a speed run with HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar announcing 25 per cent additional seats in higher education institutions, both government and private, to accommodate new aspirants for the 2019-2020 academic session. That means a sweeping arc of creating around 10 lakh seats in 40,000 colleges and about 900 universities at an investment of thousands of crores, the specifics of which are yet nebulous. Who will be footing the bill, considering the present government will soon become lameduck? Not only that, the government is also keen to pass a hurried piece of legislation in the budget session to make sure private institutions implement the SC,ST, OBC and EWS quotas, never mind that most of them honour state quota criteria, considering education is predominantly a state subject, and could technically wait for state governments to ratify the Central quotas. Is it wise to burden an already distressed education system, suffering serious infrastructural deficiencies and vacancies? It is a known fact that around 40-50 per cent of faculty seats are already vacant in Central universities and adding numbers will only skew the teacher-student ratio further. Leave aside teachers, even the reserved seats for SC/ST and OBCs are not filled hundred per cent. Nor can they be filled by others. Can we afford to increase seats only to under-utilise them? Even routine budgetary spends have remained unspent at Central varsities. Would there be enough available talent to qualify for meritorious institutions, where the quota seats are going abegging? As for institutions that confine themselves to the states they operate in, there is no workbook yet on reconciling both the imperatives of the Centre and the state.

The rushed approach to appear like a messianic regime may be appreciated but without factoring on-ground realities, the EWS quota will end up being a drag on the system rather than being an exceptional legislation of affirmative action. As it is, the quota law has opened up a war on many fronts, saying it will encourage more discrimination. There’s already talk that the EWS quota is not proportional enough, less than 50 per cent as the 10 per cent quota covers just about 21 per cent of the population. It is much higher for SC,ST and OBC categories, who, in turn, are complaining of encroachment. Does this then encourage a sense of entitlement and complacency than the competitive spirit of excellence and compromise efficiencies? Of course, there is the bigger issue of finding jobs. Though our economy can pull up a decent growth rate, job creation is still at its lowest with a manufacturing push hardly delivering the result. There is not much wisdom then in pushing more educated youth into the morass of disenchantment and lock ourselves in the trap of a demographic disaster. Besides, more than job creation, the real issue is of ensuring higher wages and salaries. We may have a skilled workforce but then there should be an equally strong template of their readiness and aptitude for new sunshine sectors, one that might help them migrate from the informal to formal sectors. Micro entrepreneurs will need to be encouraged as will new service sectors. Till we figure out the beneficiary map, the law will remain just a statistic, introduced by a regime which threw empty promises without ever intending to see them through as a legacy worth emulating.