There is no escape from the reservation genie. The Supreme Court has, by allowing Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to continue with their 69 percent and 73 percent quotas, respectively, for another year, created an opportunity for other states to exceed the 50 percent ceiling that it had laid down earlier in the Indira Sawhney case in 1992. The apex court has now asked these two state governments to provide quantifiable data on the OBC population to their backward commissions to justify their quotas.

Should these states do so, which they would probably do given the fact that their quota system is in place for decades, more states would jump into the bandwagon. The Rajasthan government, for example, is waiting in the wings. A couple of years ago it had enacted a law to provide five percent reservation to the Gujjars but this law was kept in abeyance because it led to exceeding the 50 percent cap.

There is no reason why the states shouldn’t give reservation beyond 50 percent so long as the principle of providing reservation and the principle of proportional representation are upheld. A 50 percent ceiling is arbitrary in any case and the apex court’s latest directive only confirms that.

The task for the government is now well cut out. First and foremost, it should go ahead with the caste census to find out the proportional representation of the OBCs and other castes that benefit or should benefit from the affirmative action of the state.

The second task would be to go for a bottom-up reservation policy. This would mean, reservation right from the time of admission to the nursery or KG classes. That would ensure that the students from the SCs, STs and the OBCs don’t have problem of coping with the curriculum when they are pitch-forked to the IITs, IIMs and other institutions of higher learning and centres of excellence.

Once the grounding is done in terms of education, and done well, these students would probably not need a quota in higher education. They would be able to compete on equal footing. That would also put less pressure when it comes to finding employment or seeking promotion in job, be it in the public sector or the private sector.

But this will call for a massive planning to expand quality education throughout the country. The Right to Education Act needs to be remodeled to ensure this. But this has to be a long-term planning, not the one that former HRD minister Arjun Singh attempted when he introduced reservation in the IITs and IIMs and wanted these institutions to expand their capacity by one-third in three years to cop with the situation. Shortcuts, particularly the populist ones, will create their own problems as has been witnessed in these institutions.

Plan well and plan for next 20 years. That may put the reservation genie back in the bottle. Else, we should start preparing for a reservation for the general categories before this decade runs its course.