my association with reservation started with faint remembrances of the "mandal commission" which introduced me to the word "reservation".i was unable to understand why students immolated themselves....after all there were the general category seats....and he should believe in his calibre to make it...and after all the weaker sections do need it...
later on, i realised, its not at all about caliber, weaker sections...its only about votes. india has come a long way in its 58+ years of independence but still a major chunk of society is remains hopelessly divided on caste basis. i guess when it all started, the "backward castes" were indeed the weaker and poorer sections in the society...but somewhere along the way, the equations changed but our laws dint change....hmmm..the mba in me smells dire need of "change management"
even after seeing my elder siblings battle with the system, i realised the full horror when i sat for my engg entrance exams. Bihar is one of those states where talent is plentiful and every parent dreams of his child becoming an engg, a doctor or an IAS. Students slog their hearts and bodies out and when i filled my form i realised there were only 550 seats for general students (there was more than 50% reservation)....i felt my hands and legs going cold and till this date i believe that only god and my parents "punya" helped me secure a good seat of my choice.....i saw so many of my equally intelligent and much more hard working classmates try for so many years with no results....it was a eye opener which made me sit and think about the whole process....
do we really need a system based on castes...isnt it more prudent to change the basis to financial conditions of the family??? theres a category in bihar engg colleges "girls of reserved category" whose seats are taken up by girls whose families can never qualify for the "weaker section" tag in terms of educational or financial background (belonging to the creamy layer)....reservations for SCs and STs can be justified to some extent but never never for OBCs....hardly 1% of the seats are filled by deserving candidates....doesnt it make sense to deny quota to students whose parents are already very educated or very well off...why do they need reservations at all !!!!
now for the people utilizing the OBC quota...most of the students - most of those joining engg at least dont even know what poverty or any form of oppression means...they get to lead easy lives just because they were born in the "backward" classes...the creamy layer is the one which takes almost all the benefits. however there are many people in this category who refuse to utilise their privilege and appear in exams as general category students...
arjun singh talks of increasing seats....i think thats not the solution...by reserving seats in professional institutions, u r diluting the quality of the output of the institutions even theri infrastructure somehow expands overnite and is able to handle the influx....and that dilution will harm the country whatever the number of general seats....imagine going to a doctor who has studied on a reserved seat and is extremely likely to leave the scissors in ur stomach....i think a time will come when doctors have to write their seat quota besider their degrees...the medical students are one of the worst hit category as they have to slog the hardest...
the problem has been correctly identified but the solution has been not. instead of reserving seats in professional colleges, where in very few of the needy candidates actually reach, and even if they reach they are not to cope with the pressures and the course and perform badly or flunk altogether; focus should be on improving the quality of primary education and infrastructure. A building cannot sustain the force of the elements if its foundations are weak even if it has a beautiful exterior...Once good secondary education is made available to all classes, the students from the weaker sections will themselves be able to compete with those from privileged families on the same playing field....and as left has started saying, creamy layer among the backward classes and weaker sections among the forward classes should be identified......
again i know nothing will happen...students will protest....demonstrations will be held...petitions will be signed....but ultimately none of the political parties will ever oppose the bill as they dont want to lose a single person of their vote bank....but at least there is some change....this is a far cry from the mandal commission days....and hopefully some day India will wake up to the much required change.....and as women fight for equal rights...someday the general category students will also start their fight for equal opportunities
later on, i realised, its not at all about caliber, weaker sections...its only about votes. india has come a long way in its 58+ years of independence but still a major chunk of society is remains hopelessly divided on caste basis. i guess when it all started, the "backward castes" were indeed the weaker and poorer sections in the society...but somewhere along the way, the equations changed but our laws dint change....hmmm..the mba in me smells dire need of "change management"
even after seeing my elder siblings battle with the system, i realised the full horror when i sat for my engg entrance exams. Bihar is one of those states where talent is plentiful and every parent dreams of his child becoming an engg, a doctor or an IAS. Students slog their hearts and bodies out and when i filled my form i realised there were only 550 seats for general students (there was more than 50% reservation)....i felt my hands and legs going cold and till this date i believe that only god and my parents "punya" helped me secure a good seat of my choice.....i saw so many of my equally intelligent and much more hard working classmates try for so many years with no results....it was a eye opener which made me sit and think about the whole process....
do we really need a system based on castes...isnt it more prudent to change the basis to financial conditions of the family??? theres a category in bihar engg colleges "girls of reserved category" whose seats are taken up by girls whose families can never qualify for the "weaker section" tag in terms of educational or financial background (belonging to the creamy layer)....reservations for SCs and STs can be justified to some extent but never never for OBCs....hardly 1% of the seats are filled by deserving candidates....doesnt it make sense to deny quota to students whose parents are already very educated or very well off...why do they need reservations at all !!!!
now for the people utilizing the OBC quota...most of the students - most of those joining engg at least dont even know what poverty or any form of oppression means...they get to lead easy lives just because they were born in the "backward" classes...the creamy layer is the one which takes almost all the benefits. however there are many people in this category who refuse to utilise their privilege and appear in exams as general category students...
arjun singh talks of increasing seats....i think thats not the solution...by reserving seats in professional institutions, u r diluting the quality of the output of the institutions even theri infrastructure somehow expands overnite and is able to handle the influx....and that dilution will harm the country whatever the number of general seats....imagine going to a doctor who has studied on a reserved seat and is extremely likely to leave the scissors in ur stomach....i think a time will come when doctors have to write their seat quota besider their degrees...the medical students are one of the worst hit category as they have to slog the hardest...
the problem has been correctly identified but the solution has been not. instead of reserving seats in professional colleges, where in very few of the needy candidates actually reach, and even if they reach they are not to cope with the pressures and the course and perform badly or flunk altogether; focus should be on improving the quality of primary education and infrastructure. A building cannot sustain the force of the elements if its foundations are weak even if it has a beautiful exterior...Once good secondary education is made available to all classes, the students from the weaker sections will themselves be able to compete with those from privileged families on the same playing field....and as left has started saying, creamy layer among the backward classes and weaker sections among the forward classes should be identified......
again i know nothing will happen...students will protest....demonstrations will be held...petitions will be signed....but ultimately none of the political parties will ever oppose the bill as they dont want to lose a single person of their vote bank....but at least there is some change....this is a far cry from the mandal commission days....and hopefully some day India will wake up to the much required change.....and as women fight for equal rights...someday the general category students will also start their fight for equal opportunities
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