The Government decides to have 27% reservation for OBC’s in IIM’s and IIT’s as well. Everyone has reacted as expected. The parties are all in favour. No one wants to lose out on the vote banks. The students and industry are in uproar.
The tragedy is that there our constitution writers screwed up. Reservation in any form was always bad. Reservation based on caste and not class is worse. Reservation once given cannot be withdrawn with the affected parties screaming murder, discrimination and the works.
I remember I had colleagues in engg way better off(monetarily) than I was but in engg thanks to SC/ST/Sindhi quota. And I wonder how reserving seats for already uplifted people is helping. Which is not to say that there aren’t people deserving of some concession (id rather it be in the form of scholarships and monetary concessions though).
Its not an easy problem. And perhaps the attitude of most Indians can be summed up by the answer of one student. “What can we do about it. I can only hope it will be implemented next year”
There doesn’t seem to be a single party in India which is capable of thinking beyond the next election.
The last time VP Singh, champion of the masses , champion of stupidity(it is disconcerting how often these are the same thing) imposed reservations , people died but the reservations remained. I hope it doesn’t happen this time. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
1 comment:
I don't know about the intent of our constitution writers, but Indians have managed to use it for their own benefit. The ‘Reservation’ system in India does evoke bad memories. It dates back to the first month of FYBSC (Ruia College).Most of the girls at Ruia who were doing their Bachelors in Science were the ones who couldn’t get admissions to any of Govt. Medical or Engineering college. They had missed admission just by a few marks(89-94%), and then there were boys who did miserably(40-60%).(Their parents must have tried their best to get admission to an engineering college).
I am not trying to be a sexist here, but just stating the facts. I had relatives telling me that it would be difficult on my parents to sponsor my engineering degree at a private college and get two girls married. Even if we manage to get rid of reservations, how are we going to change the way people think. I am not asking for reservations for women, but just above figures do state that there is still no equality among sexes.
Some of my 12th grade classmates had caste certificates, so they got into the best medical colleges even though they just scored 70% in PCB. We had categorized the lucky ones into three categories:
1) 98-99 ers :- The ones who were either brilliant or managed to cram the syllabus quite well.
2) SC/ST – The ones who managed to get a caste certificate.
3) Kids of rich/well to do parents – The ones who could afford the engineering fees and donations, and had contacts to apply through ‘management quota’.
Three years passed by! We had applied to Masters in Computer Science (Mumbai University). They had only 20 seats, and I had to settle for Master in Statistics for one year (I was first in the waiting list). I guess some SC/ST was luckier than me. I am sure that the intent of our constitution writers was to uplift the SC/ST, but when they get an unfair chance, you are actually putting them down in the eyes of other people.
In a way I felt the ‘self-immolation’ during VP Singh days was symbolic. A lot of us have burned our own chance of possible careers.
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