Monday, May 28, 2007

Now, that's being progressive!

Indian Express (May 27) carried a lead story that said that the Pune-based Symbiosis college was going ahead with OBC reservations, whether the government dictat holds or not. The constitutional amendment on OBC quotas, be it noted, holds for private institutions as well, not just to centrally-administered ones.

This option was mooted by a colleague of mine at IIMA during the recent stand-off between the IIMs and the HRD ministry over admissions. His argument was that such a solution would be fair to those who had applied under the OBC category (and who would otherwise have competed in the general category) and whose admission was being held up because of the legal process.

Could we have done it voluntarily when the SC had stayed the government order? I wonder what the legal eagles have to say. If there's any expert out there, I am all ears.

3 comments:

Abi said...

Any idea about how many OBC candidates made it through the general category?

Is there any effort to do a survey to find out how many OBCs made it to the IIMs the previous year?

Just curious ...

Anonymous said...

RealityCheck's social maps suggest that the distribution of OBCs is extremely skewed by state. For instance, for 6-8% of West Bengal is OBC. Does that not mean that some states will benefit much more from OBC reservations? Is that an issue that has been considered in the debate?

T T Ram Mohan said...

Abi, No idea how many made it to the general category- this sort of information is not made generally available. I doubt that any data on previous years would be there.

Biwajit, the figures you mention are interesting. But I can't see they affect OBC policy- there's no attempt in the policy to ensure any state-wise distribution.

-TTR