The quality of a country’s human capital determines how well it does. Only India believes it can be an exception. There is no other way to make sense of the government’s decision to enforce reservation in faculty jobs in IIMs, after it had ordered IITs and central universities to toe the line. This is not going to help the Narendra Modi government’s stated goal of crafting a “regulatory architecture” to create 20 world class teaching and research institutions in India. Enforcing reservations in faculty jobs is a way of concealing governance failure at all levels in education.

There is a crisis in higher education and HRD minister Prakash Javadekar’s proposed solution will worsen matters. It should worry the government that the highest ranked Indian institution, IISc Bengaluru, is 147th in the QS World University rankings. Only one other institution, IIT Delhi, is ranked in the top 200. India needs to enhance the quality of its higher education and this can only be done by improving the work environment for faculty and opening it up to competition. Reservations do the very opposite by closing off competition. Moreover, reservations at faculty level are tantamount to an admission that reservations at lower levels have failed in equalising opportunity. If a policy has failed to deliver results, why multiply its applications?

Poor governance at school level and muddleheaded policies in higher education have hurt young people. To foster an environment of job creation, it is critical to produce employable Indians. This should be Javadekar’s motto. If at all, the last tier where reservations are permitted should be when students enter college. It is now time to roll back the reservations juggernaut, else caste agitations like the Maratha, Jat and Patel movements are India’s future.

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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.

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