49.5%

While India Inc is making giant strides towards deeming itself as an economic superpower, the Government of India has decided to take one giant leap backwards, socially. The legislation to increase the reservation for backward classes to 49.5% would be up for debate on the floor during the monsoon session of the parliament, which in any case is merely a formality, given the backing it has recieved from the power hungry politicians. So from the academic year 2007, half the seats in most of the central goverment regulated universities would be filled based on quota and not merit. The IITs and the IIMs which for decades have served as the benchmark for nurturing the cream of the country won't be spared either. What a shame !!

Its true, that people from backward classes constitute more than 50% of the Indian population, and some might claim that they are only getting their fair share. But then why restrict only to OBC's. The ratio of high shool grads to the total population is least for the community of Muslims. So why not start a reservation for minorities like Muslims, Christians, Parsis too. After all, this seems more in line with some of the affirmative action policies found in the US, where Native Indians, African Americans receive a share of reservation in many universities.

The arguement put forth by the government seems fine, if most of these reserved seats are occupied by OBC's who come from a poor, oppressed background. But from my personal experiences I have seen the best seats are hogged by those who actually come from a financially sound background, but have the tag of OBC attached because their great grand father was oppressed. I have seen people much richer than my dad ending up paying a pittance for fees and scraping with grades at the bottom of the class, while I would slave to beat the stiff competition.

Some claim that the financial background should be the sole criteria for reservation. However, I do not completely agree with this as a child born to illiterate parents in a rich family is probably not on par with a relatively poorer kid from a well literate background. Probably, a better system might be to limit reservation to a single generation of a family only. For example, if your parents made use of it to educate themselves and attain their career goals, you should not be given access to it. Again, this system is not foolproof or convincing as there would be controversy over what educational level of the parent would disqualify the kid from the reservation.

But, the best solution of all is to strengthen the primary and secondary school to educate the backward classes so that they are on a level ground with students from open category while competing for higher education. The financial shortcoming could still be overcome with subsidised fees, but merit shall not be compromised. Instead, the current system tries to mold professionals out of students who havent received a solid educational background, resulting in tall qualifications with shallow foundations.

We claim that our society is just and equitable, and we shall always stive to create equal opportunites for all. Its a shame that we have to resort to such a quota based reservation system to attain that goal. And 60 years after independence, instead of rooting out the caste system, politicians are making further attempts to firmly implant it. But then again, I am an armchair theorist typing from 12000 miles away from home and can only play with words. The real heroes are the numerous striking students nationwide who raised their voice in unision to combat this divisive law. May common sense prevail !

ps: Thapar unmasks Arjun Singh's ignorance . ...and these are the inept leaders leading us into 21st century ! (courtesy Anarkist)