AP Features, March 29th, 2007
India's Supreme Court suspended a government program Thursday to reserve spots for lower-caste students at the country's top medical, engineering and professional schools _ a plan that has repeatedly prompted widespread protests.
The quota system for India's prestigious state-run professional schools was to come into effect with the current crop of applications, due in the coming months. But a two-judge panel on the court temporarily halted the program on Thursday, saying it could not be implemented until judges have ruled on its legality.
Students, many of them upper caste, lit firecrackers and cheered the ruling at celebrations in New Delhi and elsewhere in India, while officials said they were confident the court would eventually rule in favor of the quotas once it had fully reviewed the program.
Hinduism divides people into castes, and those on the lower rungs of the ladder _ officially labeled "Other Backward Classes" _ still face discrimination, even though the system was outlawed decades ago.
While the court promised to hear out the government's reason for implementing the program, it was nonetheless sharply critical of the plan on Thursday, especially that the quotas are to be based on a 1931 census _ the last one that counted caste.
"What may have been the data in a 1931 census cannot be a determinative factor now," the court panel said in handing down its order, which prompted cheers from students packed into the court who had to be restrained by security guards.
Most of the hundreds of millions of India's 1.03 billion people who are classified as "backward" live on the margins of Indian society.
But some are powerful landlords, politicians and business owners. Opponents of the quotas say it is these people who will most benefit from the program, an assertion echoed Thursday by the court, which also expressed concern that the policy could harden caste divisions.
"Nowhere in the world do castes queue up to be branded as backward. Nowhere in the world is there a competition to become backward," it said.
The judges also raised concerns about the seeming immutability of the program _ "reservation cannot be permanent and appear to perpetuate backwardness," it said.
Publicly funded schools already must reserve 22.5 percent of their seats for India's indigenous peoples and its dalits, or untouchables, who have no caste and have suffered centuries of severe, often violent discrimination.
Supporters of the expanded quota policy, which Parliament passed last year, say it is needed to right social and economic wrongs. They are also pushing for quotas at privately run schools, which the government is considering.
They insisted Thursday that the court would let quotas stand once officials had a chance to present their complete implementation plan.
"It's my belief that the Supreme Court will (eventually) allow the implementation of this law," Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, one of the champions of the quota legislation, told reporters.
Critics, who have organized repeated protests and strikes over the past year, argue that lower castes should be helped through better basic education, pointing out that many jobs and university spots already reserved for dalits remain empty.
"This policy is completely wrong _ merit is the criteria that we believe, not caste," said Jiten Jain, a 22-year-old student leader at New Delhi's Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University who was celebrating with a few dozen of his peers Thursday. He wouldn't say which caste he belonged to.
Hindus make up about 84 percent of India's 1.1 billion people. There are also caste-like divisions among Muslims, who account for 13 percent of India's people, and Christians, who make up 2.4 percent.
