?Won?t help in long run?

As the "reserve versus deserve" debate rages, statistics reveal that candidates who make it to management/technical or academic institutes on merit perform far better than those who get in via the quota route.

The reality is that quota merely helps a student get in, it doesn't help him/her stay on. The loss is thus two-fold. One, meritorious candidates lose out. Two, most beneficiaries of the quota system don't benefit either.

"In the long run, quota actually harms students. This is because one might get in through reservation but there is no guarantee one will be able to survive on various parameters," says an IIM teacher.

In 2004-5, an abnormally high number of students at IIM-L, after being found wanting on various parameters, had to repeat the postgraduate programme. Some "dropped out". Most of them were quota candidates.

In the general surgery department of BHU's Institute of Medical Sciences, out of 50 students, 38 were admitted under the general category while the remaining 12 got through on SC/ST quota. "While the majority of candidates admitted under the general category are very good, the performance of 8 of the other 12 candidates was bad. The other four were just average," says Dr S.K. Gupta, reader, general surgery, IMS BHU.

In Kanpur's Ganesh Shankhar Vidyarthi Memorial Medical College, 50 per cent SC students failed in the MBBS final year exam this year. Of the other 50 per cent quota candidates, 35 per cent passed with the help of grace marks.

With inputs from HTC Varanasi, Kanpur