Quotas challenged

Delhi

Medical students took over India’s biggest medical school this week, in a protest against admission quotas. Universities currently reserve 22.5 percent of student slots for applicants from the lowest castes and indigenous tribes. Recently, the government proposed setting aside another 27 percent of slots in top medical schools for applicants from a groupof castes just above those, known as “other backward classes,” or OBCs. Anti-quota demonstrators managed to temporarily shut down the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, but it appears unlikely they will prevail. “Government can and must balance the elitism of meritocracy,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, “by facilitating those at the bottom of the social pyramid to rise to the apex of an academic pyramid.”

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