I have turned 18 this year, and so did most of my friends. We even graduated from school and now in the coming months, we’re all going to attempt to get into various prestigious colleges across the nation. One thing that worries most of us is, the reservation system.
While most of us feel that this system in some way or the other is serving a good purpose, I’ll tell you why I don’t feel the same. The man who cleans up my neighborhood belongs to a lower caste. His ancestors did the same, and so will his offsprings. It is because neither he is interested in educating his children, or anybody else from his entire community. So doesn’t he want the welfare of his coming generations?
The problem is, even if he decides that he’ll get his children into a nice institution, he knows that he won’t be able to provide his children with the best available study material required to crack any such entrance examination, provided his economic condition. Even if he tries to avail the benefits of the reservation system, that was introduced to serve this purpose, how will his children compete with the children of rich ST/SC people who have the right to avail the same benefits but have an upper hand in additional access to resources? Isn’t this unfair to the lower-class ST/SC? They are still being ill-treated, and the upper-class ST/SC are alone being benefited. Isn’t this creating more bridges instead of breaking barriers?
Okay, let’s consider another case, where a person got qualified into IIM/IIT or any other top institutes because of reservation. He manages to become a successful doctor/lawyer/engineer. Now who is going to make sure that this man/woman doesn’t reuse this policy to help his son/daughter secure a seat in these institutions again? There should be limits as to how many generations of a particular family need upliftment to be socially acceptable.
Another issue worth our concern is, who will look into the educational rights of the middle-class general category children? By middle-class I mean, the ones whose parents cannot afford to put them into foreign universities or big private institutions here in India itself. Maybe they couldn’t manage to secure a seat in some government institution, BUT were worthy of good education. These are the people who have to make sacrifices on the cost of their future.
Talking about the religion based reservation, the LARGEST minority, i.e. Muslims get reservation under the OBC category. The question that arises is, there are some classes in Hindu/Sikh/Parsi/Jew religions classified as OBC, but their proportion however, as compared to Muslims is far less. Who will ensure that these groups that equally deserve reservation, don’t get cheated?
Few days back, I read an answer on quora.com where a person mentioned the increasing number of drug addicts in his campus that belong to ST/SC group. The reason he stated was the embarrassment faced by these students once they got in because of reservation, but realized that they can’t live up to the standards of that institution. Now the question I have is, who is accountable for these lost lives and seats? Who is accountable for the talent this nation lost when deserving general category applicants were denied admission into top institutions?
My point here is, the reservation system was introduced in newly independent India for the upliftment in the social status of the classes that were ill-treated for centuries in the Indian subcontinent. Basically, we are paying for the mis-deeds of our ancestors. But has any ruling party or political group ever looked into the issue and actually assessed what percent of disadvantaged actually benefit from this system? As far as I have observed, the people of this generation don’t bother much while interacting with others as to which caste they belong to. Isn’t this what social status on caste based grounds is all about?
Is it justified when I say that British looted and plundered my country’s resources for more than 200 years and created more opportunities for themselves, so I as the next generation Indian deserve a reservation in UK?
I understand that this debate could go on forever and yet remain inconclusive, but why is public made to suffer because of vote-bank politics? The number of reserved seats currently is 49.5%. It is very clear that no political party wants to lose this 50% vote-bank by allowing amendments in this system. To put an end to the misery of the suffering students, the well-off ST/SC/OBC has to take an initiative by not letting themselves get fooled by this politics.
“Light a fire for a man and he will be warm for a day. Teach the man how to light a fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.”
