Social justice opportunities are too unevenly spread across India

Context: Recently the Supreme Court has upheld reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in medical seats for the All-India Quota (AIQ).
How does one’s domicile influences access to social justice when it comes to medical seats?
First, 85% of the seats for Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) degrees are reserved for candidates from within the state itself and the rest of the seats are listed under the All-India Quota (AIQ).

• Hence, the access to medical seats for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), or OBC candidates is primarily dependent on the number of seats available within their own state.

Second, there are state-level differences that cause a disproportionate distribution of benefits.

• For instance, in Bihar, the number of seats per million of the population is only 20.8. West Bengal has 42.1 and Tamil Nadu has 135.2 seats per million of its population. Thus, a resident of Tamil Nadu has a clear structural advantage over any resident of West Bengal and Bihar.

Three, reservation criterion also matters a lot. For instance, 97.2% of Tamil Nadu’s population is categorized as OBC, SC, or ST and it has reserved 69% of its MBBS seats for them. In Bihar, the total proportion of the OBC, SC, and ST population is nearly 79.8%, and it has reserved half its MBBS seats for them.

• Whereas Bihar has 11.1 seats reserved for every million of the reservation-beneficiary group, West Bengal has 42.4, whereas Tamil Nadu has 81.6. Hence, from the perspective of social justice, an OBC/SC/ST in Bihar is more than seven times worse off as compared to an OBC/SC/ST in Tamil Nadu.

Road Ahead

• First, the introduction of OBC reservations in the 15% All India Quota needs scrutiny to understand the state-level differences. If OBC candidates from different states are competing against one another, it may mean that an OBC from Tamil Nadu who is in the 97th percentile in that state would be competing against a 38th percentile OBC from West Bengal.
• Second, the problem of one-sided benefits of reservations has been noted by Rohini Commission report with respect to caste. This one-sided benefit should also consider the dimension of ‘geography’. OBC quota should be normalized for state-level differences to reduce structural inequalities between states.
• Three, there is a need to create a data-oriented framework to ensure equality of opportunity.