There is only one reason for the existence of certain institutions of higher education ? the promotion of academic excellence. The Indian institutes of technology and of management have long enjoyed such premier status, and the question of their autonomy has had to be asserted to various governments for various different kinds of threats to that autonomy. The Centre?s latest move is yet another kind of threat to this ethos of excellence, and a two-pronged one. First, over and above the reserved seats for scheduled castes, there will now have to be reservation for other backward classes. Second, so that this does not affect the number of seats in the general quota, the ministry of human resource development is thinking of raising the total number of seats. In this way, the Centre would show its commitment to students from OBC, generally ?democratize? these institutes by making them take in more students, and also seem to remain committed to some sort of a meritocracy by not cutting down the number of unreserved seats.

The most important fallout of this sleight of hand is that the teacher-student ratio will be altered for the worse, since the increase in the number of students is not being matched with a corresponding increase in the size of the faculty. This will directly affect standards. Admitting students on premises other than merit, at this stage, inevitably results in these students not being able to cope with the demands of these institutes. This, in turn, puts them at a serious disadvantage in the job market. When the government thought up these reservation schemes it had also suggested elaborate coaching plans for these ?backward? students ? arrangements that would further complicate the structures of teaching and evaluation. Reservations risk consolidating, rather than erasing, social inequality and disadvantage. They can undermine the priority of merit over extraneous criteria, turning inequality into a reverse route to privilege. The Centre seems not to have heeded this logic at all, and has also been toying with the idea of reservations in the private sector, in spite of the Supreme Court?s objections to the idea. By intervening wrong-headedly in the autonomous and strictly meritocratic running of these institutes, the government will be responsible for not only academic, but also social and political damage.