India Reserves Half of University Places for Lower Castes

India's supreme court today gave the go ahead for almost 50% of places at the nation's publicly funded universities and colleges to be reserved for lower-caste and other disadvantaged people.

In extending the world's largest and oldest affirmative action system, the court accepted that higher education institutions had to reserve a quota of seats for untouchables, tribals and "backward classes".

The issue is an explosive one in India. When the government introduced the proposal two years ago, it led to a week of street clashes between high-caste students and police. Many junior doctors went on strike, closing down hospitals across the country.

The system of "reservations" is one of modern-day India's defining institutions. The preferences were enshrined in the nation's first constitution in 1950 in an attempt to erase inequalities fostered by the centuries-old caste system.

At present the law maintains that 22.5% of all places at India's universities are guaranteed for indigenous peoples and dalits, or untouchables, found at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy.

The government wants to extend this scheme to secure seats for the remaining "backward" sections of society, who make up 27% of the country's 1 billion people.

The debate over the affirmative action program â€" which is supported by all the major political parties â€" threatens to reopen a bitter debate in the country over whether equality or merit is more important in 21st century India.

Students at many elite Indian colleges complain that such a move would lower the quality of the student body by admitting the academically less qualified at the expense of clever applicants.

Supporters of the affirmative action scheme say India's booming economy, which is growing by 8% a year, has only entrenched the inequalities of Indian society and drastic remedies are required.

"For the wealthy they can simply buy their children seats at the top colleges. They have 100% quotas for the rich in private institutions. Merit is the first casualty in such cases," said Anoop Saraya, a senior doctor at Delhi's prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who supports the quota scheme.

"What the government needs to do is increase the number of seats at publicly funded universities."

Many upper-caste Hindus argue that many "backward classes" have made such gains that most quotas should now be based on economic need rather than caste.

"I think we have to start looking at indicators of poverty rather than caste to assess need," said Shiv Khera, a management consultant who petitioned the court arguing the government plan was illegal.

"Let's see who has little income or who does not get enough calories a day to eat. Then let the government step in and help. But caste is just a politician's tool to create vote banks for themselves."

The five-judge bench, headed by India's Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, attempted to balance these conflicting arguments by saying that the prosperous "creamy layer" of people from lower sections of society should be excluded from the quota system.

Dipankar Gupta, professor of sociology at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, says that defining this layer will be key to limit the "damage" of quota policies.

At present the rating scale used by government to determine "backwardness" is weighted by "social factors".

Prof Gupta said factors such as whether a person works in the fields or whether a community feels other castes resent it are rated to be three times more important than a group's poverty level. Such factors are also one and half times more important than if a community sends its children to school.

"Being part of the backward classes is a perception of social status. It is totally bogus."