India has entered the 21 st century and our first contribution to this new century is reservation. However we have been true to our late-latif attitude and come up with this contribution about 6 years late.
India is like a keyboard and the various Indians are like the various keys on this very keyboard. Each key has got it's very own specific use, yet they all co-exist peacefully on the board. A question arises– Do we as Indians, need to learn a thing or two from this plastic keyboard?
The answer is definitely YES.
India is a land of many cultures and more than a billion people follow them. There are many casts/creeds in India 'General' being one of them. During the framing of our constitution, our intelligent politicians feared that if the reservation bill was introduced, it would lead to communal disharmony. But later it was decided that for the betterment of society reservation be implemented for a period of 10 years. But after 10 years it was ext ended for another 10 years to enhance vote bank. and this continues till date.
The Honorable Supreme Court Of India had also requested the Government of India to keep the reservations limited to the graduate level so that only the creamy layer may venture out into the post-graduation level and bring laurels to the country irrespective of cast, creed, colour or sex.
Reservation is not a bad thing. but it should address the needs of those who actually need it. It should be based on some hardcore realities and the only hardcore reality is that our country is solely divided into three groups-the rich, the poor and the middle class. The middle class is hard hit with the ever-increasing cost of living and cost of education but somehow they are pulling the cart. It is next to impossible for poor people to send children to school for more than a few years Higher education is out of the question.
Increasing the number of seats is not going to help as because this will in turn increase the number of professionals while the number of jobs remains same and it will further increase unemployment.
In the past 59 years of independence, how has reservation helped the backward classes? Statistics reveal the answer but the government is ignoring the truth altogether we are really committed for the social equality of our country we should reserve seats in primary and secondary schools while abolishing reservations in medical and engineering colleges where admission should be solely on a merit basis. or the day is not far off when we send our first manned mission of 100 people with the following divisions :-
25 – OBC
25 – SC
25 – ST
5 – Sports Persons
5 – Terrorist Affected
5 – Kashmiri Migrants
9 – Politicians
and if possible
1 – Astronnaut
NO PUN INTENDED!!!!!!!
June 22, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Well, while you ask the question that in past 59 years how has reservations helped backwards ? But, one must tell you that backwards got reservations from 1990 onwards, so much for your information.
And being from OBC community, i must tell you that people have greatly benefitted from these reservations.
You cant ask the question and answer the same.
As far as your composition of mission team is intended its better than 90 brahmins, 5 banias and 2 rajpuits and one sikh.
Your formula represents the unity in diversity, lol. NO pun intended
June 23, 2006 at 2:56 am
I choose to contradict “mineguru”. Our country has been providing the privilege in form of reservations to the SC/ST/OBC since the days of Dr. BR Ambedkar which for sure was several years before 1990. And am sure Mr. MineGuru would accede here.
We probably need to study the whole bifurcation of the caste system. The article by the author here doesn’t really target only the backward class. It is intended to project how the general class is suffering at the hands of these reservations for various sects.
In a professional degree class of 30, as of today only 7 seats are “RESERVED” for General category people. Even on these 7 seats there are various NRIs betting their money in form of donations and high fees. So where does a meritorious General class student go ??? May be sometime in future our government would be passing a law for “Reservations for General class”.
The famous dialogue piece from the block buster : Deewar would then be re-scripted as
“Mere paas merit hai………….99.9 percentile marks hain………har subject mein par excellent performance hai …………tere paas kya hai………… ”
“Mere paas reservation hai !!!!! ”
No pun intended.
Read more Opinions : Reservations ………dirty politics………@ http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10065641&postID=114810461009434608
June 23, 2006 at 2:57 am
I believe the reservation should be based on the Economic status rather than the caste and also once a person from one family gets the “PRIVILEGE” of reservation, the family should be black listed for any further reservations.
Why should the people who work hard, suffer ???? We stop to think…..that being an OBC/SC is more of an honor than an insult.
June 23, 2006 at 10:24 pm
to “mineguru”
It was nice to read your response.I think you have misjudged me. I, for the record want to clarify that I have nothing against the OBC’s or as a matter of fact any other community.I, myself have a lot of friends who are from the OBC community and they support me. I want that each and every citizen of the country should be treated as equal. and on the basis of merit and not on the basis of something which is out of their control like their religion or caste.I would also like to propose a solution according to which reservations, if any should be given at the high school or seconary school level so that everyone should get a fair chance at the engineering/pre-medical level. Even the Honarable Supreme Court Of India said that there should be no reservation at the higher levels.Well the reason is quite simple to understand. Even the IIT’s have confirmed that the students who get admission on the basis of reservation often find it hard to pass their exams on time and usually their 4-year degree programme gets completed in about 6 years due to their failure to understand the english in the question paper. As a matter of fact, many of medical students who are themselves of the OBC quota are against reservation only because they have the same opinion, in support of which they sat on a 19-day hunger strike.
June 27, 2006 at 9:43 pm
well its good that you are not against any community or caste. and why should you be. we are all Indians.
But, dont you agree that even USA has affirmative action, where top universities and private corporations have been asked to include the Blacks in education courses and business. This has been a great success.
Secondly, dont you agree that representation of the upper castes and lower castes in Indian society, economy, polity is highly skewed in favour of some particular castes.
Dont, you agree that vast majority of Indian people have been deprived of their fundamental rights, through an invidious caste system.
June 27, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Reservations – Some Questions and their Answers
*
Q: What is reservation?
The word reservation is a misnomer. The appropriate word for it used in the
Indian constitution is Representation. It is not given to anyone in his
individual capacity. It is given to individual as a representative of the
underprivileged community. The beneficiaries of reservations are in turn
expected to help their communities to come up.
Q: Why reservation?
The policy of reservations is being used as a strategy to overcome
discrimination and act as a compensatory exercise. A large section of the
society was historically denied right to property, education, business and
civil rights because of the practice of untouchability. In order to
compensate for the historical denial and have safeguards against
discrimination, we have the reservation policy.
Q: Were Reservations incorporated by the founding fathers of the
constitution only for first 10 years?
Only the political reservations (seats reserved in Loksabha, Vidhansabha,
etc) were to be reserved for 10 years and the policy review was to be made
after that. That is why after every 10 years the parliament extends
political reservations.
The 10 year limit for reservations is not true for the reservations in
education and employment. The reservations in educational institutions and
in employment are never given extension as it is given for the political
reservations.
Q: Why give reservations on basis of caste?
To answer this question we must first understand why the need for the
reservations has arisen. The cause for the various types of disabilities
that the underprivileged castes in India face / have faced, is the systemic
historical subjugation of a massive magnitude based on caste system having a
religious sanction. Therefore if the caste system was the prime cause of all
the disabilities, injustice and inequalities that the Dalit-Bahujans
suffered, then to overcome these disabilities the solution has to be
designed on basis of caste only.
Q: Why not on basis of economic criterion?
Reservations should never be based on economic status for various reasons as
follows:
1. The poverty prevailing among the Dalit-Bahujans has its genesis in the
social-religious deprivations based on caste system. Therefore poverty is an
effect and caste system a cause. The solution should strike at the cause and
not the effect
2. An individual’s Economic status can change. Low income may be taken to
mean poverty. But the purchasing value of money, in India, depends upon
caste. For example a Dalit can not buy a cup of tea even in some places.
3. Practical difficulties in proving economic status of individual to the
state machinery are many. The weak may suffer.
4. In caste ridden India infested with rampant corruption, even for an
unchangeable status like caste, the false “Caste Certificate” can be
purchased. How much easier will it be to purchase a false “Income
Certificate”? So income based reservation is impractical. It is no use
arguing when both certificates can be bought, why caste only should form
basis of reservation. It is certainly more difficult to buy a false caste
certificate than a false income certificate.
5. Reservation is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The main
aim is to achieve the active participation and sharing by the “socially
excluded” humanity in all the fields of the affairs of the society. It is
not panacea for all ills, neither it is permanent. It would be a temporary
measure till such time the matrimonial advertisements in newspaper columns
continue to contain the mention of caste.
Q: Should there be a creamy layer criterion or not?
The demand from anti-reservationists for introduction of creamy layer is
ploy to scuttle the whole effectiveness of reservations. Even now out of all
seats meant for SC/STs in IITs , 25-40 % seats remain vacant because it
seems IITs do not find suitable candidates. Just imagine what would happen
if by applying creamy layer criterion the SC/ST middle class, lower middle
class people who are in position to take decent education are excluded from
reservations benefit ! Will the poor among SC/STs be able to compete with
these ‘privileged ’students’ trained under Ramaiah and at various IIT-JEE
training centers at Kota ?
Of course Not.
This will lead to 100 % seats in IITs for SC/STs going vacant.
Q: How long should the reservations continue?
The answer to this question lies with the anti-reservationists. It depends
on how sincerely and effectively the policy makers which constitute
“privileged castes” people in executive, judiciary and legislature,
implement the reservations policy.
Is it just on part of “privileged castes” people who have enjoyed undeclared
exclusive reservations for past 3000 years and continue to enjoy the same
even in 21st century in all religious institutions and places of worship, to
ask for the timelines for reservations policy?
Why do not they ask, how long the exclusive reservations for particular
community in the religious institutions and places of worship are going to
continue?
The people who have acquired disabilities due to inhuman subjugation for
3000 years will need substantial time to come over those disabilities. 50
years of affirmative action is nothing as compared to 3000 years of
subjugation.
Q: Will not the reservations based on castes lead to divisions in the
society?
There are apprehensions that reservations will lead to the divisions in the
society. These apprehensions are totally irrational. The society is already
divided into different castes. On the contrary reservations will help in
annihilating the caste system. There are around 5000 castes among the SC/ST
and OBCs. By grouping these various castes under 3 broad categories of SC,
ST and OBC, the differences among 5000 separate castes can be abridged. This
is a best way of annihilation of castes. Therefore rather than making
rhetoric about reservations leading to divisions in the society the
anti-reservationists should make honest and sincere efforts to annihilate
castes. Have these people made any efforts towards this direction? In most
of the cases the answer is NO. The people making these anti-reservations
rhetoric, all this time have been enjoying all the privileges that the
Indian caste system offers to the “Privileged Castes”. As long as they enjoy
the privileges of the caste system they do not have any qualms regarding it.
But when it comes to making castes as basis for achieving social equality by
providing representations these same people make noises. These are the
double standards of highest order practiced by the ‘privileged’ people.
Q: Will not reservations affect the Merit?
As regards to how Merit is defined in a very narrow sense and what it
actually means, following is the quote from an article by Prof Rahul Barman
of IIT Kanpur.
“Is merit all about passing exams? After all, are the exams a means or an
end? If the exams are means to look for ability to make better engineers,
doctors and managers, then can there be better methods to look for such
ability? After all in my first engineering class I was told that a good
engineer is the one who can produce the best out of the least resources and
similarly, management is supposed to find one’s way in an uncertain
situation – or allocate scarce resources in the most optimal way possible.
If that is so, whatever I have seen of our deprived masses (of which
overwhelming majority belongs to the backward, dalit castes or adivasis),
they have the astonishing capacity to make something productive from almost
next to nothing! For the last few years I have been studying small industry
clusters, like Moradabad brass, Varanasi silk and Kanpur leather. Put
together (all the clusters in the country), they are exporting more than the
IT sector and their cumulative employment will be several times of the
whole of IT industry. In all these clusters they operate with miniscule
resources – small investment, no electricity, forget about air-conditioning,
non existent roads, lack of water, and little formal education. These
clusters are primarily constituted of these so called backward/ dalit castes
and are truly a tribute to the genius that our society is. But in spite of
centuries of excellence these communities have hardly produced any formal
‘engineers’, ‘doctors’ and ‘managers’, and conversely these elite
institutions have not developed any linkages with such industries and their
people. ”
Reservations of more than 60 % have existed in the 4 states of southern
India and around 40 % in Maharashtra since last 50 years. On other hand in
the north Indian states the 15 % ‘privileged castes’ have been enjoying 77 %
of the seats in educational institutions and in employment (assuming that 23
% reservations for SC/STs are totally filled, which is not the case). The
World Bank study has found that all the 4 south Indian states are much ahead
of north Indian states in terms of their human development index. It is a
common knowledge that all the southern states and Maharashtra are much ahead
in fields of education, health, industrial development, in implementing
poverty alleviation schemes, etc. than the north Indian states. This shows
that reservations have indeed helped the southern Indian states in making
progress on various fronts. Whereas lack of adequate reservations is
responsible for the lack of development in most of the north Indian states.
Q: Have existing reservations for SC/STs been effective or not?
The reservation policy in the public sector has benefited a lot of people.
The Central government alone has 14 lakh employees. The proportion of
Scheduled castes in class III and IV is well above the quota of 16 per cent
and in class I and II, the proportion is around 8–12 per cent. So, the
middle and the lower middle class that we see today from the Dalit community
is because of reservation. With no reservation, the entry of these people in
government services would have been doubtful.
The situation is similar in education. An article in the EPW (Economic and
Political Weekly) estimates that there are seven lakh SC /ST students in
higher education and about half of them are there because of reservation.
Reservation has certainly helped but there are limitations in any policy
with the way it is implemented.
June 30, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Thank you for at least acknowledging my response. Howeer, I fail to see any change in your attitude. According to you, only Brahmins were allowed to study. I completely agree with this as you can prove that all the brain power in India is entirely brahmin centric. That is why all our great l eaders like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Dr. Abul Kalam, Dr Zakhir Hussein, Giani Zail Singh definately were all brahmins,Indian Air Force, Indian National Army and Indian Coast Guard are full of Ksatriyas and not only from now but from day 1.and so on. while our good freind here “mineguruji” is the only sane person who stands benefitte from reservations is you. All others like the students who got admissions in the reputed institutes of the country like AIIMS and the various IIT’s under various quotas are repenting and protesting against the quotas and went on a 19- day hunger strike are all fools and should all take private tutions from “mineguruji” as he only can think of their betterment. It should also be noted that, in his first ever reaction mineguruji divided Indians on the basis of classes existant in rural India in response to my dividing seats according to reservations awarded by Arjun Singh.
July 13, 2006 at 4:39 pm
DURYODHANA AND Karna are two important characters in the Mahabharata. Duryodhana was the eldest son of King Dhritrashtra and Karna was the illegitimate and abandoned son of Kunti, reared in a poor, ‘low caste’ family. Despite such a big gap in their backgrounds, both Duryodhana and Karna shared a beautiful relationship of friendship that has few parallels in myth or history. Duryodhana possessed exceptional physical strength and had acquired expert ise in mace-wielding and wrestling, but he could never get the better of Bhima, the second of the Pandava brothers.
Likewise, Karna, gifted with exceptional skill in the use of bows and arrows had an invincible foe in Arjuna. This common enmity with the Pandavas brought Duryodhana and Karna together and their urge to show down their rivals was so overwhelming that nothing short of their rivals’ blood could satisfy them.
But there was a marked difference in their approach. Duryod hana was driven by jealousy, which made him adopt sordid means including poisoning, to eliminate Bhima. On the other hand, Karna was driven by envy and it was this spirit to surpass Arjuna that made him constantly hone his skills in the use of weapons. But he never used ignoble means. Indeed, he even refrained from killing Arjuna at one point, because it would have not been on honourable terms.
However, I deplore the way he was ridiculed, while he was in Drapudi’s swamvarya as being a low caste person while as I said earlier he was actually kunti’s son. Similarly, I feel it to be perpostrous enough that how a person’scaste defines his capability to do anything. I believe that everybody should be given a fair chance to everything in life.There is only one religion and that is humanity. There is only one religion that is humanity. Reservations should only be based on economic class i.e. poor, middle class and rich. As I told last time that I have a OBC friend who is in favour of reservation. His father is a bank manager.He has had a fortunate upbringing and had everything he had wished for his entire life. We gave our entrance test together. His rank was 1500 behind me. Still he got into his desired stream while I was turned down as I was from the ‘General’ category..This would seem fair to “mineguruji” . However it was unfair to me. I lost one of my good friends to a devil called reservation. What wrong did I do to deserve this ? Perhaps ‘mineguruji’ may enlighten me on this.
According to me, a jealous person loses his capacity to think right, he is so engrossed in planning his rival’s downfall. Jealousy not only re duces a person to a mental wreck but leaves him low in self-confidence, also. But the envious one strives hard to achieve his goal and when the opportunity comes he goes all out, like Karna. Today we face competition in every sphere of life. We find people around who are racing ahead of us and it is but natural for us to brim with the spirit of competition to overcome them. But what is important is that we are not so overwhelmed by this competitive urge as to become jealous and in the process become blind to the means.
August 4, 2006 at 10:02 pm
i accept with mine guruji. its all powerful & effective answers to anti reservationists.
are they(Anti-res) against caste system or caste based reservation system?
if they are ready to remove their identifications and to mix with others in marital relations, they are eligible to discuss abt this.
August 5, 2006 at 11:24 am
Dude, what has marital relations got to do with quotas? If a Brahmin wants to marry another Brahmin, then it could be due to several reasons (like vegetarianism, language etc.) and not just caste.
I am a recent graduate of an IIM and I can vouch for the fact that guys who get through quotas in IIMs are hardly backward…they would have never faced any sort of discrimination in their lives. To give them the crutches of reservation is stupid.
and mineguruji….fine, agreed that merit isn’t just about cracking exams. But please, you or your celebrity friends like Arundhati Roy, enlighten us about the alternatives. If we don’t take CAT/JEE scores to get into IIM/IITs then on what basis should admission be? The ability to make dung cakes? The ability to shepherd a flock of sheep?
January 15, 2008 at 12:51 pm
a lot like Christmas -
GOOD QUESTION. WHY can’t we have more nativity scenes in Anchorage? Or, for that matter, how about in Seattle?