Quotas Aren't Negating Merit And Efficiency
By V.M.Yazhmozhi
02 March, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Though caste based reservation is an affirmative action to uplift the socially and educationally oppressed classes and to bring forth social justice, critics often argue that “Quotas are a negation of merit and efficiency”. A paper published by Ashwini Deshpande, Professor at the Delhi School of Economics and Thomas E. Weisskopf, Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan has defeated this ideology.
A first-of-its-kind research has been carried out by them in Indian Railways, the world’s largest public sector subjected to affirmative action to verify whether affirmative action reduces productivity and efficiency. In their study, they’ve used a two-stage procedure in which,
• The first stage was the use of the non-parametric method called Data Envelopment Analysis of productivity changes and
• The second stage was an econometric analysis of the factors which influence productivity.
They’ve reported the key findings of the study in a paper titled “DOES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REDUCE PRODUCTIVITY? A CASE STUDY OF THE INDIAN RAILWAYS”. This paper was published in World Development Journal, a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal of Elsevier, world-leading publisher of journals that provide reliable and systematic information in the fields of science, medicine, law and social sciences. The outcome of the study clearly states that reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Indian Railways between 1980 and 2002 has not reduced productive efficiency in any area, but in fact, has increased it in some areas.
Indian Railways, the largest public sector provides four levels of employment – Group A to Group D. Among the four groups, Group A employees occupy the highest, dignitary positions. Ashwini and Weisskopf have considered Group A and B employees for their study. There is 15% reservation for Scheduled Castes and 7.5% reservation for Scheduled Tribes. They’ve compiled data from various zonal annual reports distinguishing SC/ST employees from non-SC/ST employees at different levels, for eight regional railway zones from 1980 through 2002. Ashwini and Weisskopf have considered only 8 zones out of 9 for their study. The reason was also clearly pin-pointed in the excerpt from the paper given below:-
“From 1952 through 2002, there were nine zones in operation:: Central Railway (CR), Eastern Railway (ER), Northern Railway (NR), North-Eastern Rail-way (NER), North-East Frontier Railway (NFR), Southern Railway (SR), South Central Railway (SCR), South Eastern Railway (SER) and Western Railway (WR). Because separate data on SC/ST employment were not available for the NR, we had to drop that zone from our database”.
Moreover, they’ve compared zones with more SC/ ST employees with those with less SC/ST employees as a part of their analysis. In that way, they’ve found no negative impact of reservation on productivity and efficiency.
Likewise, the authors of the paper have provided clear reasons and evidences throughout the paper. Though it is such a reliable work with proper statistical analysis, some cunning critics have raised more opposition stating that it is not reliable. Two arguments repeatedly put forward by those critics are:
1. The sampling methodology is not clear.
2. The overall productivity and efficiency of Indian Railways can’t be determined by Group A and B employees alone.
It is obvious that those critics have just read the article published in the English daily, “THE HINDU”, but haven’t read the paper published by the authors completely. That is the reason behind the expression of such half-baked ideas. One can find the answers for both the arguments in the paper itself.
The tactics behind the usage of jargons like “sampling methodology” is that these critics think that if they use such jargons, everyone will get confused as such there is a serious error. But the fact is, the authors of the paper have populated their database with the entire SC/ST employment data in Group A and B and there is nothing to do with sampling. Therefore, the first argument is unwise.
Candidates who would like to get a placement in Group-A positions have to take an All India civil services exam. Placements will be made based on the exam scores and rank obtained by them. Placement in Group B positions is done entirely via promotion of Group C employees, on the basis of seniority and/or competitive exams. Group C includes clerical staffs and Group D includes peons, attenders and cleaning staffs. Applicants for Group A and B only declare themselves that they belong to Scheduled caste(SC) or Scheduled Tribe(ST) and get their placements, whereas many SC/ST applicants those who apply for Group D jobs do not use reservations, because they know that they can meet the qualifications without declaring them as SC/ST. Hence they can’t be treated as beneficiaries of reservation. Moreover, Group A and B include managerial and decision making jobs which have a larger impact on the overall productivity and efficiency. This is the reason why Ashwini and Weisskopf have taken Group A and B employees alone into account. This defeats the second argument too. The truth is that this paper by Ashwini and Weisskopf has strongly defeated the myth “Quotas are a negation of merit and efficiency” with a clear statistical analysis. So, these critics with a Brahminical stand find it very hard to digest and hence they are trying to prove it false.
This is a great work to be welcomed by all those who work relentlessly to achieve social justice. But, at this juncture, we should think in this dimension also i.e. several researches of this kind have been carried out in countries like United States, wherein affirmative action has been in practice since 1960s.But in India, which has a very long history for reservation, only one or two studies have been done so far. So, people who believe firmly that reservation is an affirmative action to bring forth social justice should come forward to engage in researches of this kind in various fields!
Reference: The paper titled “Does Affirmative action reduce productivity? A case study of the Indian Railways [World DevelopmentVol. 64, pp. 169–180, 2014]” by Ashwini Deshpande and Thomas E. Weisskopf available @
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X14001521
Author bio:-
This article is written by Er.Yazhmozhi, gold Medalist in Bachelor of Engineering specialized in Computer Science. I’ve published two papers in peer-reviewed journals. I am a freelance application developer. I am an active participant in other social activities too. I am currently in the editorial team of Kaattaaru, a Tamilnadu based monthly magazine which covers socio-political and cultural issues in the society Mail: - [email protected]
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