Who is Stephanian

Who’s a Stephenian?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
EmailControversy at an elite college hides a bigger question on true empowerment The current controversy over enhanced and new quotas announced by Delhi’s St Stephen’s College should, at the very least, fine-tune the larger debate on affirmative action. Controversy has come to the college after the authorities did two things. One, they set a target of reservations for more than 50 per cent of the seats on offer. Two, they introduced a new category for a 10 per cent quota, Dalit Christians. Taken together, these admission criteria have invited fears about declining space for merit and — this from Anil Wilson, the principal of the college himself who is on leave currently and has in the past fought a public battle with the acting principal — the technical difficulties in ascertaining how to categorise Christians by caste nomenclature. But what are really of interest in a wider context are two questions. Why is it that St Stephen’s, with the paltry 400-odd seats it offers to freshmen each year, should exercise the rest of us so much? What are the ways to adequately empower the unprivileged through affirmative action?