Inclusion versus excellence: Caste and the framing of fair access in Indian higher education
Abstract Written for a non-Indian audience, this paper outlines the main issues involved in the current controversy around the expansion of India's positive action programmes to new caste groups and to elite segments of the higher education system. It is concerned mainly with the ideological aspects of the controversy over quotas or ‘reservations’in state-funded elite professional colleges for the ‘Other Backward Classes’, this being the official term for a large (more than 40% of total population) and disparate group of intermediate castes, most of whom are poor and backward although some are prosperous. politically powerful rural castes. The focus is on the two central ideas of inclusion (or social justice) and excellence (or merit) which map the terrain on which battles over access to higher education are fought. Recent evidence on caste inequality (specially in higher education) is discussed. as are the specific contextual factors which complicate questions of fair access to higher education in countries with large and highly unequal populations. The paper ends with a preliminary analYSis of the different kinds of justifications offered for positive action programmes and the modalities which they may follow.