I’m not Tam, but Brahm: My understanding of caste at and beyond BITS, Pilani
This post is to offer my perspective on the now viral article titled ‘I am Tam, But Not Brahm’: My Dalit Experience At BITS, Pilani by an Anonymous alumnus of my alma mater. It traces my understanding of caste as someone not Tam (I’m Telugu by origin), but a Brahm who walked the hallowed corridors of the prestigious institution.
I write this post because I, much to my dismay, find that many of my fellow alumni rely on rhetoric that must have been left in pre-data days as basis for their arguments. This is a narrative where I try to explain the evolution of my views on affirmative action, a topic that the author touches heavily upon.
What this post is not: This is not a full-fledged rebuttal of the original post, nor a rejection of the author’s ideas (I do mention where I don’t agree with the author, but that’s not the intent of this post). At the same time, this is not to completely concur with the author either — I have my reservations against reservations and I mildly touch upon those as well.
First of all, I want to say that the author gets a number of things absolutely right. One of the first things that you are told at BITS by peers as well as by the administration itself is that you entered the college purely on merit and not via a backdoor. And you notice immediately that almost everyone around you is from an upper caste background (perhaps the reason for the insti earning the moniker Brahmins Institute of Technology and Science).
Most of these people aimed for other prestigious institutions like the IITs and probably didn’t qualify for a course they wanted. But more importantly, they saw people who scored much, much lower than them qualify because of reservations (despite being from the same economic background).
As a 17-year old, this naturally hurts and our minds being perennial pattern seekers, put two and two together — okay, these smart people around me have also gone through whatever I went through. I don’t find anyone here who doesn’t deserve to be here. So anyone who isn’t here, isn’t here because s/he doesn’t deserve to be here (also see availability bias). These people, therefore, are meritocrats. And they are my people.
A tribe is born.
This was literally my first week at BITS. Over the next one year, almost all conversations at the dinner table centered around reservations. We spoke about how it was unfair that a rich OBC student ranked at par with us could still use an Open Competition seat to get in, thereby doubling advantages for OBCs and putting us, General Category students, at a disadvantage. In other words, he’s taking my seat and giving his seat to another OBC student, who probably has scored lower than me.
Reserved Categories 2, General Category 0.
In the fourth year, when many gave CAT or GATE, the story repeated once again, cementing our opinions that this country does not value merit and people abuse caste based reservations.
And this view was fine then, really. Because as 17 to 20-year olds from privileged families living in metropolitan cities, we didn’t know better. But today, we must.
First, the facts.
We’re entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
There are two ways to approach an ideological debate — one is to rely on rhetoric to parrot what others tell us and one is to rely on facts to paint a picture to draw our conclusions for ourselves. I find that most debates are pointless because they take the first approach. A debate that devolves into “You oppressed me and my people” or “You imbecile took away my IIT seat” serves nobody.
So, the facts. What are they?
The primary goal of affirmative action programs like that of caste-based reservation in India is to ensure that different groups of people are proportionally represented in education, jobs, administration, etc.
The primary goal of affirmative action programs like that of caste-based reservation in India is to ensure that different groups of people are proportionally represented in education, jobs, administration, etc.
27% of the seats in educational institutions are reserved for OBCs, 15% for SCs, 7.5% for STs, and the rest (50.5%) is Open Competition. This is common knowledge. But how many of us really know caste distribution in the country? It turns out that the statistics on that is heavily disputed, but most census studies seem to put SCs at around 19.7%, STs at 8.5%, OBCs at 41%, and the rest (general category) at 30.8% of the Indian population.
How does the representation in higher education institutes compare to this? Annual reports titled All India Survey on Higher Education from the MHRD put the enrolment numbers in the following ranges:
- General category takes up 47.4%
- OBCs take up 33.75%
- SCs take up around 13.9%
- STs take up around 4.9%
To put the numbers in perspective, let’s assume there are 1,000 seats and 1,000 people randomly picked from the Indian population are competing for these seats. Now, math dictates that these 1,000 people must fit into the 1,000 seats available. You’ll see soon that this does not happen.
Of the 1,000 people, there are likely to be 308 general category folks, 411 OBCs, 197 SCs, and 85 STs. Of the 1,000 seats, 495 are reserved (150 for SCs, 75 for STs, and 270 for OBCs). 505 are open for anybody.
The usual argument goes thus — if people have reservations, they must not compete in the Open Competition pool because they take away seats from General Category people.
The data clearly shows that that is not the case, and true proportional representation has not yet been achieved. Applying the percentages, we see that 475 seats are taken by General Category (there are supposed to be only 308 people from here!). 337 seats are taken by OBCs (there must be 410), 139 are taken by SCs (there must be 197), and 49 are taken by STs (there must be 85).
The people left out are: 73 OBCs, 58 SCs, 36 STs, and 0 General Category folks. In total, 167 people. How many seats are occupied by General Category folks (475) over and above their proportional representation (308)? That’s right. Exactly 167. In order words, General Category students occupy 16.7% more seats than they should.
Once you look at these two data points, the picture is clear. Some parts of society are overrepresented and some are underrepresented. But, the heartening part is that, over the years, the representation has improved (evident from historical data).
So, do affirmative actions like reservations, work?
My opinion, and it’s strictly just my opinion—Yes and no.
Yes, because it’s incredibly important to represent different groups of society in all places. Diverse, inclusive societies are happier and more productive than those that are not. In that sense, broadly, in India, affirmative actions seem to be working in promoting inclusivity — it needs to be better, but we are getting there.
Affirmative actions are important because it exposes us to different cultures and different prisms of life.
Affirmative actions are important because it exposes us to different cultures and different prisms of life. It’s important that young people understand these perspectives and colleges are a great place to enable that. As the author points out, maybe I could have learned to view world from a Dalit’s eyes if they were more represented at institutes like BITS. This is perhaps why my wife (who graduated from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University where reservations exist) has a more holistic view of the world, than I do.
As for myself, it took me a ton of learning — books like My Father Baliah and movies like Pariyerum Perumal opened me to worlds different from mine and helped me gain a lot of perspectives.
So, yes, they work, in one sense.
I could also argue that affirmative action doesn’t work because, instead of removing prejudice, it institutionalizes it. The author writes “… it seemed safe to assume that if you’re a reserved category student, you’re probably going to be substandard at your work”.
I could also argue that affirmative action doesn’t work because, instead of removing prejudice, it institutionalizes it.
I can affirm that this assumption is prevalent, and from anecdotal experiences, it’s right some of the time. The general view is that if someone used reservations to enter a college, unless evidence exists to the contrary, they are not smart enough to enter the college on their own merit, but on a crutch provided by the government.
Now, here’s where I think the author may be treading on dangerous territory. If BITS introduces caste-based reservations or caste-based scholarships to incentivize people from backward classes to apply, sure, perhaps the distribution may become more representational of Indian society at large. But wouldn’t casteism become more prevalent within BITS itself? The author himself claims that he faced no outright casteism at BITS. Will introducing an element of caste in admissions or scholarships engender outright casteism that he says isn’t there right now?
One could argue in a Schumpeterian fashion saying some degree of disruption is always required before real change happens, and over time it will normalize to be inclusive. I doubt that.
If your goal is to build an inclusive society but reservations is actually dividing it further, what do you achieve in the long run? And more importantly, how do you solve this problem? There are a number of ways people say we can solve problems associated with reservations. One is via making reservations economic status based and the other is to limit the number of times someone can use reservation.
Sadly, I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to comment on how or whether either would solve the problems.
My other major problem with social justice efforts is the demonization of ‘merit’. The author (and other well-meaning people) are wary of using the word ‘merit’. I don’t blame them. I have come to learn that merit is beyond where you stand in a race. Because where you stand in a race at a given point in time is dependent upon where you started from, no matter your speed. If every child doesn’t start from the same point or wears the same quality of shoes, is it fair and just to compare all kids on the same scale? I don’t think so.
If every child doesn’t start from the same point or wears the same quality of shoes, is it fair and just to compare all kids on the same scale? I don’t think so.
At the same time, how do you ensure that as a nation, you are moving forward without a metric of merit? How do you ensure that society constantly keeps raising the bar for itself and doesn’t keep pulling the averages down? How do you produce artists, creators, inventors par excellence instead of being happy being mediocre, pandering to the lowest common denominator?
Unfortunately, again, I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to answer that.
What I do know today, and what I did not know as a 17-year old, is that representation and inclusiveness matter. And that affirmative action does not take away my seat. And that I need to learn better than to rely on emotional rhetoric to build worldviews.
All I can say is that anyone who thinks “But economic reservation is so simple and logical” is not doing justice to the gravity of the caste problem in India. And anyone (this included me in the past) who naively thinks “But these problems don’t exist anymore” is living in a filter bubble.
If you’re an upper caste person who thinks so, you’d do well to think why there (in all likelihood) exists a different coffee tumbler for the maid in your house, if class/caste problems didn’t exist anymore.
