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 .