Reserving for the Undeserving

[Genre: Rang de Basanti]

Reservation for OBCs - Everyone seems to have an opinion about it and so do I. And I think the title describes my sentiments. The government is planning to take away from the deserving and give it to the undeserving. India shining takes one step forward and two steps back.

Reservation - The Rationale

To bring up those who have languished by assuring them seats in higher education and soon even in Private Sector. Pro-reservationists argue that :

The backward classes do not get the facilities as the so called upper classes.
The backward classes come from government schools where the facilities are lacking and the student though bright are not exposed to "Englis".
Backward classes do not have enough finances to educate the young.
And many more similar statements...

Reservation - The Irrationale

But who is responsible for this? The government has failed to bring out the backward class from its backwardness for the last 60 years. What is the point of reserving the seats for those who have not been educated well at the school level and might not be able to pass even though they get admissions. oh but they can pass!!! The government which can reduce the barrier for these people to get into the colleges can even reduce the barriers for them to get out. 50 % pass marks for general category and 30 % for OBCs and so on...very simple really!!

The government is also washing its hands off the inefficiencies which are present in government school system. According to a study conducted by Harvard University and World Bank, published in 2004 in Journal of the European Economic Association.

"25 percent of teachers were absent from school, and only about half were teaching, during
unannounced visits to a nationally representative sample of government primary schools in India. Absence rates varied from 15 percent in Maharashtra to 42 percent in Jharkhand, with
higher rates concentrated in the poorer states."

Where does the 2% education cess we pay every year go?

Another important thing is to know who actually constitutes an OBC in the comtemporary sense. For example why should there be reservation for Post Graduation in Medicine? A person who is going for a PG is definitely one who has completed his MBBS. He is at par with all upper classes who have completed the same degree.

Why should a rich OBC get preference for a seat over a poor brahmin? Is this the qovernment's definition of social justice ?

Is reservation the answer for upliftment of the underpriveleged?

Following is the extract from HRD sinister Arjun Singh's interview with Karan Thapar in Devil's Advocate. The unhonourable sinister does not seem to know the rationale behind reservations. I think just reading Karan Thapar's questions is sufficient because the answer to all of these is "Decision of parliament is supreme".

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/decision-on-quota-is-final-arjun/11063-4-single.html

According to a study by IIT (refer the link on Karan Thapar's interview)

"50 per cent of the IIT seats for the SCs and STs remain vacant, and for the remaining 50 per cent, 25 per cent are the candidates who even after six years fail to get their degrees. So, clearly, in their case, reservations are not working."

The report of the Parliamentary Committee on the welfare for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has similar findings
.
"It says, that looking at the Delhi University, between 1995 and 2000, just half the seats for
under-graduates at the Scheduled Castes level and just one-third of the seats for under-graduates at the Scheduled Tribes level were filled. All the others went empty, unfilled. So, again, even in Delhi University, reservations are not working."

How far will we go down the reservation lane ?

I wonder do we have reservation for OBCs in the Armed Forces Officer Cadre. Are(Will) the decision makers for the defence of our country as competent as the people whose places they have taken (might take).

A reality not so far away:

Manmohan Singh to Bush - We are sending Indians to the moon next year.
Bush - Wow! How Many?
Manmohan Singh - 100
25 - OBC
25 - SC
20 - ST
5 - Handicapped
5 - Sports Persons
5 - Terrorist Affected
5 - Kashmiri Migrants
9 - Politicians
and if possible1 - Astronaut .

Horoscopically Incompetent

(Genre: Just Like That)

Yup, thats me! I am horoscopically incompetent to get married. I wonder if this would make a good pickup line....Probably not... Had I known good pickup lines, I wouldnt be writing this piece today.

But after 2 years of pestering me to get married, my parents have told me that my horrorscope is dominated by Mr Mangal. Mr Mangal has setup strict constraints for me to get married, one of which is that I cannot get married this year. Another is that I can marry only one of Mr Mangal's female prodigies.

How good is astrology in predicting futures ? Do all the people born at the same day and time as me have the same fate? I think it is too much of generalization.

I ask my parents, inspite of being educated, how can they believe in such gibberish, and I get a reply saying that they are "liberal orthodox". They are liberal but have some orthodox beliefs. I wonder which type of paradox, this statement lies in.(explained in detail in my previous blog ) But if one starts listing the liberal orthodoxes in the world, that would include the likes of Osama (Liberal capitalist, but wants to kill kafirs).

Our country follows a lot of these (dis)beliefs. Some are as follows:

1. Following Godmen
2. Ganesha statues drinking milk
3. Cat crossing your path being an ill omen
4. Don't buy iron on Saturday

Rabindranath Tagore said " We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are forever paying for its cost with obscruation of our mind and destiny."

So wake up!!

The Paradox Process - By Derm Barrett

(Genre:Book Extract)

Type of Opposites:

We can divide opposites into 2 broad categories. If X and Y are opposites then:

1. X is right then Y is wrong - Most basic type of opposite, If a person is bad then he/she is not good.

2. X is right and Y is also right - Consider the following statements "A penny saved is penny earned" and "Spend money to earn money". These statements are in principal opposite to each in the methodology lead to the same end "More Money".

This type of opposite is what we call a PARADOX.
Types of Paradoxical Thinking:We can classify paradoxes into 3 major types:

1. Contrary Thinking - We are mentally programmed by our upbringing and social environment to believe that whatever is common and traditional is right and whatever differs is wrong. Contrarian thinking involves questioning a popular belief, then looking what its reverse is. An example would be showbiz where the marketeers try to create a controversy/scandal/bad publicity to promote the film.
2. Janusian Thinking - Inspired by the Greek God Janus who had 2 faces looking in opposite direction (Also the root for the word January which looks towards the year that went by and the year that lies ahead.). This involves juxtaposing to opposites together and creating something new and useful. Example would be a knife, which has a sharp blade that will cut your hand, and a handle which will not.
3. Hegelian thinking - this involves fusing 2 opposites to produce a third entity. Example would be a newspaper photograph which is an amalgamation of black and white dots.

Practical Uses of Paradoxical Thinking

1. The Case of the Bus Operator with an old fleet
An old Bus operator was facing tough competition from a new player in the market who had a new fleet of buses and was able to reduce the travel time from 3 to 2 days.The conventional wisdom would suggest that the "old" bus operator should buy new buses to compete. But on the contrary, the Bus owner increased the travel time from 3 to 4 days and added activities on the way like stay at resorts, games etc.and was eventually able to takeover the new competitor.

2. The Case of my friend's wedding gift: It is one thing of suggesting thinking in opposites and other thing in practicing it. So here is a case where I used Paradoxical Thinking.
My friend came to India from US to get married and was supposed to go back. We thought of buying him something that would be small so that he take it to US and be useful. We mulled over antiques, precious stones etc. and in the end came up with a gift which was contrary to our initial thing. We bought him something which was very big and yet he could take it along. Something in which he could carry all the "small" gifts that he got - A Large Suitcase.

So go ahead and think out of ordinary to solve daily problems paradoxically.