New Delhi (AsiaNews) – For the first time in years, a candidate from the Scheduled Castes (SC), India's historically discriminated groups, including Dalits, achieved first place in admissions rankings for medical doctors (MD) and super special seats at India's top medical institutions.
The publication of the rankings for admission to the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the top autonomous public medical universities and hospitals in India, comparable to the best western university hospitals, also saw four other candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBC) ranked in the top 10, bringing the number of places won by candidates from the ‘reserved’ category to five. Quotas exist for candidates from socially marginalised groups.
The latest ranking concerns the Institute of National Importance Combined Entrance Test (INI-CET), which governs admission to postgraduate courses at institutions legally classified "of national importance”, with the AIIMS leading the way.
This examination is different from others that have been in the news in India for months, like the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, Undergraduate (NEET-UG), which more than two million aspiring doctors take every year to gain the chance to pursue to a basic medical degree, the first step in a path that leads to specialisations.
It is precisely regarding the NEET-UG that the Indian government has filed an affidavit with the Supreme Court, noting that it is planning a profound reform.
The examination could abandon the current single-part format and adopt a two-part format, modelled after the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for engineering courses.
The government is also reportedly considering switching from the traditional paper-based format to a computer-based test, already used for seven of the eight major tests administered by the National Testing Agency (NTA), responsible for university entrance exams. Only the NEET-UG is still administered entirely on paper.
The government has made it clear that any changes must be agreed upon by the Ministry of Health and the National Medical Commission, which regulates the medical profession, and that a final decision will be made only after the recommendations of a specially established task force led by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of the IT giant Infosys.
The reform under consideration is a direct response to youth protests that erupted after a series of irregularities related to the NEET-UG exam, bringing to the fore the weariness of the younger generation towards a political class seen as outmoded and corrupt.
The response of the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi included the resignation at the end of July of the education minister, which was one of the protesters' demands, while the upper house of parliament approved tougher penalties for those who leak information concerning examinations.
The fact that a quota-qualified candidate topped one of the country's most selective tests, amid a credibility crisis of the entire university admissions system, has reignited a debate on reserved seats just as the government is trying to rebuild trust among the younger generation.
In India, quotas for Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes have been enshrined in the 1950Constitution, but the issue has remained a political battleground between those who see them as a brake on meritocracy and those who see them as the only possible remedy for centuries of exclusion from higher education.
In fact, cases like the AIIMS rankings, moreover, are no longer isolated. In recent years, candidates from reserved categories have increasingly reached the top spots in national rankings, compared to a general or unreserved category, i.e. the non-SC, non-ST, non-OBC, and non-disabled population.
Excluded from any quota, the general or unreserved category is estimated to be around 15 per cent of the population, based on the 1931 caste census, the last conducted nationwide, as well as on subsequent socio-economic and caste survey reports in various states, including Bihar.
That estimate, however, is now outdated. In 2019, the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) was created through a constitutional amendment, with a 10 per cent quota, reserving preferential access to those who, despite not being SC, ST, or OBC, live below a legally established family income threshold.
Presented by the Modi government as a corrective to economic poverty regardless of caste, the EWS remains controversial because it has increased the total number of reserved seats beyond the 50 per cent ceiling previously set by the Supreme Court.
For critics, this risks obscuring the original rationale for quotas, not poverty per se, but historical caste discrimination. This means that poor families already classified as SC, ST, or OBC are excluded from the EWS precisely because they already fall into another category.
The 2027 census is expected to be the first since India's independence that will collect caste data countrywide, but is yet to start asking questions on caste or reveal its methodology.
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