India: quotas vs. the caste system: affirmative action can be an even more emotional issue in India than in the United States.

• Author: Sengupta, Somini
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

The problem of caste prejudice in India is as ancient as the country's Hindu texts. In the last 15 years, an economic boom has lifted millions of people out of poverty, and India is now home to one of the world's largest and best-educated work forces. But for those at the bottom of Indian society, caste discrimination has limited access to education and jobs.

The Indian government recently proposed extending college and private-school quotas so that nearly 50 percent of admissions would be reserved for lower castes: The intense reaction it inspired shows how difficult a challenge spreading the benefits of prosperity to India's needy majority can be.

Opponents say additional quotas, also known in India as "reservations," would lower the quality of the best universities and divide students along caste lines.

"Why are we still thinking in terms of caste-based reservation?" asks Poojan Aggarwal, a third-year medical student in New Delhi, the capital. "We should talk now of total meritocracy."

To protest the proposal, doctors and medical students in New Delhi went on strike for several days in May. But the government hasn't backed down.

India's caste-based quotas are nothing new. As authorized by its 1949 Constitution, India has long set aside 22.5 percent spots at public universities for people from lower castes. The new proposal sets aside an additional 27 percent for a group known as "other backward classes" (O.B.C.'s), mostly people from the laborer and servant caste (shudras), nomads, and various tribes.

In the Hindu caste system, there were four varnas, or classes, that determined lifelong status and occupation. Within each varna were hundreds of jati, or subcastes. The system was outlawed when India gained its independence from Great Britain in 1947. But attitudes rooted in this ancient tradition have been slow to change in a population that is about 80 percent Hindu. (Most of the remaining 20 percent is Muslim.)

ECHOES OF U.S. DEBATE

India's current controversy recalls the decades-long debate over affirmative action in the U.S., where the concept was introduced in the 1960s in an effort to remedy the effects of centuries of racial injustice and gender discrimination. Affirmative action programs in college admissions and employment have often been an inflammatory issue, raising objections from those who believe that it results in "reverse discrimination."

The Supreme Court struck down rigid quota systems in university admissions in 1978...