This TOI article covers a story of a coaching/ preperatory group called Super 30 in Patna, Bihar, which had sucessfully to put 28 out of 30 students belonging exclusively to to OBC and SC categories through IIT JEE.

One of the justifications offered by the supporters of giving 27% reservation for OBCs at IITs and IIMs is the inequity in access to coaching that is a required or key component in cracking the IIT JEE, faced by many students who belong to the rural, and usually economically weaker, sections of the Indian society. In this I agree with their diagnosis but not the cure they suggest.

IITs, in my personal experience, when compared to vast swathes of other professional colleges at regional levels, remain of the most caste (and religion) blind places in India. I have heard stories and narratives from cousins and friend who had attened local engineering colleges in South India that operate under the caste based reservation schemes, and most these stories uniformly highlight the fact how divisive caste remains after the admissions end.

Caste in their stories acts as a litmus test for association and friendships they seek at the college level. Some of these cousins wouldn't even talk to/ or associate with other students who were admitted under the general category, much less OBC or SC/ST categories, because they belonged to a different caste. In many cases, these narratives are taken to the extreme, and caste based politics and conflicts break out in these college campuses.

Also it takes but a minute to look up the origins of the Indian politicians to realise that a significant number of them were forged in these politicized campuses, where the main business of the day was not education but power struggles. A simple visual contrast that I could always see was the political slogans graffitied all over the Osmania University's campus in Hyderabad where I wandered around in the summer breaks vis-a-vis the clean slate of the IIT Kgp campus, with sole exception of Gymkhana election period. A great description of the desolation wrecked by caste and religious power struggles on what was once great Benaras Hindu University can be read in Pankhaj Mishra's novel 'The Romantics'.

So when well meaning people suggest OBC reservations at IITs, they forget the potential fallouts of taking such a step on the subsequent intellectual and social cultures that form the true markers of IITs. What then is the solution to address the problem of access to elite and elite making places such as IITs?

I would argue for steps that would increase the prevelance of groups Super 30. These may include requiring exsisiting coaching institutes to take on economically disadvantaged but brilliant students to educated people taking initiative to start up coaching institues such as Super 30 that focus exlusively on the disadvantaged. I suppose my argument is similar to those proponents who argue for increased and better governmental focus on school education as a better policy to raise the boats vs. simply lowering the bar based on caste.

I wrote this comment (with minor editions in grammer etc as shown here) in response to Madhat's observations on the discriminatory attitudes and treatment shown by professors towards SC/ST students at IIT-K when he was a student there.

Madhat,

You rightly have pointed out the fact that SC/ST students are discriminated against at IITs, and have provided anecdotes about professors dishing it out to these students. I also agree with your assertion that there were/are SC/ST students who did/do quite well vis-a-vis the general category students who didn't do/do that well after getting into IIT.

Yet, you have completely ignored another complementary, and I think more important, issue: the attitudes of the rest of the student body to these students in other aspects of IIT living. From my own experience at IIT-Kgp circa 1995, I can tell you that these attitudes were no different, if somewhat less blatant, than those of the professors you have mentioned in your post. So much so that, in my time at IIT Kgp, these students (by themselves? because of the attitudes of others?) segregated themselves into a seperate section of rooms in the hall/ hostel, and even a seperate table in the hall/ hostel mess.

While it might be that the hall/ hostel I lived in was subtly more 'caste' concious than other halls/ hostels at IIT Kgp, and at other IITs, the question I want to pose to you is, what was your own personal experience of interaction (here I am assuming you were a non SC/ST student) with these body of students? How many of these students did you (or even better, you still) count as pals or members of your IIT posse? It is all good and well to point to the casteist attitudes of the professors, but to ignore the ever present indifference shown by the GC students to the SC/ST students within IITs is not right either.

That said I second your opinion that one surefire way of demolishing the beast of caste is inter caste marriage (I would even go further, and advocate for inter regional, inter religious, and inter racial marriage). Only let's hope our convictions are strong enough to put our money where our mouth is when the marriage clock strikes for us.

Thanks, -S

PS: Since you might ask, what about me, I can only say that I did stay with two 'SC/ST' students after I got out of IIT for a year until I brain drained myself, and I really didn't give a shit. Some of my caste concious cousins would have been horrified had they known of this living arrangement.

I couldn't resist commenting on this post by Badri on the topic of adding reservations for OBCs (Other Backward Castes) at IITs, one of which is my alma mater. He thinks it is a necessary step from "a social justice/ equal access to elite education" point of view.

I disagree with him on this because doing so, I think, would destroy the fundamental philosophical principle that makes these places special. As an aside I think getting into IITs is far more democratic than getting into other elite universities here in the US, such as the Ivy Leauge ones.

I want to add one more data point to the other posters here regarding the diversity of the student body at IIT Kgp when I was there during 1995-1999 - as the professors contend in their letter, it was indeed diverse with people represented from all over India, both urban and rural. In fact I heard the names of some of the small towns such as Darbhanga because of the incoming class has students from these towns.

Also having interacted with my school mates who went to other IITs like IIT-M (my parents too would have wanted me go to IIT-M, alas my Hawaa was too screwed up! :)) or IIT-B, I can also see how these places might be dominated by kids who transition from the big city schools to IITs located in the same city. I mean even if you open an IIT, at say Vellore, which IIT do you think kids who grew up in Madras would prefer to attend? As an aside my anecdotal data from that period of time also indicates that the student body at IITM, in particular, is split almost evenly between folks from TN and AP, with a representative slice from the rest of India. If nothing else, this in particular makes me glad that I ended up at IIT-Kgp instead of IIT-M, with no offence intended to IIT-M folks. :)

As for debate itself, I second rc's arguments, because I don't trust the exsisting political system not to fk up whatever distribution scheme they might come up with (not that it won't end up being hazaar fked eventually) by implementing it without doing any rational study.

On a more anecdotal level, I had an classmate from Sikkim at IIT Kgp, who could have gotten into the Computer Science program if he chose to use the SC/ST reservation quota. But since he did not care to be slotted into want he percieved (rightly I think) a less desirable category, he chose Civil Engineering corresponding to his AIR. One can't deny that SC/ST students, fairly or unfairly, weren't (aren't currently?) slotted by the rest of the students into a seperate category; at Kgp the terminology used to classify these students was 'sheddus'.

Clearly as the rationale behind IITs being percieved as the best, as well the self perception of the students at IITs of themselves as being the best, hinges on JEE, replacing it with any other less background 'blind' scheme would lead to fracturing, at a pyschological level, of what I would call the intellect rationale on display at any IIT.

That said, it is still necessary to ask questions regarding the function and place of such 'elite' (and 'elite' making) institutions in any society.