These lower casts have been divided into Scheduled Casts, Schedules Tribes and Other Backward Casts. The recent SC judgement allows for the the reservations for 26% OBC in various educational institutes. As expected the first statements from the Upper Casts student and people have been guided by Survival Instincts. The self defence and survival mechanism has brought them to immediately call foul, the judgments. As usual their arguments have centered around primarily:
1) Talent and ability should be the only criteria
2) Poor and Underprivileged are even in Upper Casts.
Lets take it one by one.
First the so called talent and ability that they so grandly call should be the only criteria is nothing but another name for opportunity and head start that certain people have got. How come it is always that a Doctors son at most times end up becoming a doctor, for an engineers son it is almost expected that he will clear the grades to be an engineer. Same with actors, politicians, armed forces personals etc. No stats are needed, you just have to look around and we see that this phenomenon has become such a fact of lives that we have started ignoring it. What does it proves? Certainly their aren't any genes that makes you a capable doctor or an actor or an engineer. Its just that these so called second generations were fortunate enough to be brought up in an environment where excelling at the trade is easy. Our Indian society has been built in such a way that passing trades to next generation is just a formality. There in no way, that a doctors son has a higher ability because he has passed the entrance exams in a higher grade then others. Its just because he had been FORTUNATE ENOUGH to have been brought up in a household which has given him a distinct advantage in terms of passing the exams and choosing a career.
So far so good, no one has any objections of a son following his father footsteps for good. The problem is that if it remains so that a cobblers son will always have to be a cobbler and a fisherman's son will always end up being a fisherman. What if they want to change to other professions. What if they want to move up the ladder. There is no talent involved here. A fisherman's son will have to work 100 times harder to achieve the same kind of marks, ranking or standing in an exams that have been so far the playgrounds of the privileged. And then they talk about equal opportunity and test of abilities. A fisherman's son scoring 40% is equal to 80% scored by a doctors son in a Medical Entrance.
Lets give this doctors son a project. Take 10 years and try and become a bigger star then Abhishek Bachhan or Aamir khan in Film Industry. See how difficult it. See how the head start and a privilege matters. Off course there will always be a Shahrukh Khan in every field where a person comes from no where and hits the invisible walls so hard that he breaks in no matter what. But then these SRK' s are so few what about the others. What about the other such's in other fields.
The biggest problem with this world has been the top 5% of the population has been holding 80% of the resources. And when someone tries to do something about it they cry thief. Why the hell is no one ready to share. Why there always have to be few under your feet for you to rise up. Why do we always end up saying "Let them have cakes then" when people are dying of starvation. Does anyone have moral courage to go and look at how people are living just to make their basic needs met. How they are queuing up hours in a line to get their kerosene or where a father has to choose between having her daughter out of the school or his son because he can't meet the expenses of both. We want to fight an equal battle with these guys!!!
We have to admit that equal opportunity comes from equal grounds. If you have people from unequal standing competing for same resource you can never call for best ability trail.
Now to the second point:
Yes agreed, there are underprivileged in upper casts as well. This has been a call going around for god knows how many years but can somebody actually point out to someone from this category. I have not seen many examples of this. Yeah some families from upper cast are poor, but poor for them does not mean choosing between education for children or going without food for days. Just go and see poverty and tribal and backwards in villages. So even if there are some really underprivileged in the upper casts who also needs help, but using this argument to block the greater good is nothing but using their shoulder to fire you shots.
Recently PM of Australia apologised for all the wrongs that's have been committed by Whites on the aboriginals (Though they worded it such so that there are no financial consequences). But isn't it time for us to accept our responsibilities and the responsibilities of our ancestors for all the wrongs they have committed. After all we are also enjoying the fruits of all the goods that they have left for us.
Look Beyond.. Maybe we can help build a better world.. Maybe if i sacrifice my sons seat in an IIT to an OBC for a lesser college, it would help reducing gaps within. Can't we walk slow for a while so that we can walk together after some time.
5 comments:
Very thoughtfull blog mate. Just a few points to your thoughtfull essay.
The reservation is there since last 50 years. There is no coutry in the world which has alloted this kind of special quota for the underprivilaged for such a long time. So don't say it's the time to wake up now. We woke up long back. It's time to realise the fact that the people who originally benefited from the quota system, now their second and third genneration is benefitting from that reservation. This generation is not underprivileged in any way and I don't see a reason why can't they compete.
Its always easy to give example of other countries like Australia. Frankly, Aussie priminter has done nothing for the upliftment of Aboriginals, all he has done is a media stunt of saying sorry with no real benefits for anyone. We have done a lot better than that.
I don't know if there are poor people in upper caste or not. But i know for sure that 80% of Indians are poor and this poverty is spread across all sections of society. Some communities are poorer than others. It is not possible to put the tag of povery on one caste and prosperity on other. Why not advocate a system based on Poverty line rather than on caste division. ?? I don't know about you , but seems like much better system to me .
The only problem with this system of reservation is that it is incentive inefficient. A system which is not based on competition and skills , provides disincentives for hard work. There are other methods for uplifting the under privilaged sections of society which are in line with incentives. Subsidising education for a lower caste person can be one of them. You get good education by paying lower fee (or no fee) but you face the same level of competition at entry level.
Point taken that yes 50 years and still not visible result. In America it took more then 100 years for blacks to be integrated. 1860 was somewhere the civil war was and then 1965 Martin Luther kinds still giving his Dream speach. We are still half way down.
The creamy layer policy of Reservation does take care of the fact that even for lower casts rich don't exploit. I think families with income above 2.25 lacs p.a. are no binefitting from reservation.
Problem with poor upper casts compared to poor lower casts is that they didn't have any society constructed barrier for them. A recent survey shows 9 percent in urban and 11 percent in rural poor upper casts compared to 24 and 29 percents for lower casts. So i think broadly the criteria is OK if not perfect. Yes there can be other better policies but setting them up and implementing them would be another big project in country like ours. So till then lets not stop atleast what is OK.
I really fail to understand what 26% reservation in professional educational institutions is going to do to uplift the lower casts.
If you really believe that a fisherman’s son scoring 40% in an entrance exam is equal to an 80% by a doctors son. Then our entire evaluation system is equal to naught
The majority of the people who are affected by this quota system will be children of the middle class families. The rich doctors and engineers have enough money to ensure that their wards join private institutions and get their education and become doctors and engineers
What will the government tell a student coming from a middle class family who has studied hard scored his 80% but does not get a seat why? Because politicians want to gain votes and popularity by allocating quotas. He studies scores his marks and still does not get his seat. In my engineering days there were 12 seats out of 60 available under general quota the rest were all under some quota or the other. I shudder to think how many seats will be available now after the new rule comes into play. There is seriously something wrong with this system and no one wants to touch it because of either loosing favor or loosing their seats.
Allowing a fisherman’s son scoring 40% to enter a professional college and compete against a doctors son scoring 80% is just plain cruelty to the poor fisherman’s son because he will never be able to cope up with pace of teaching as his intelligence is capped at 40% owing to weak foundations but that is not of concern to the rule makers they are quite happy to let a 5 years medical course extend to 10 years and waste the tax payers money.
We think that by just granting admissions using quotas our job is done .Does anybody bother to see how many of the quota students graduate? How many of them are finding difficulties in coping up? It is just a classic example of government bravado that in reality will have naught affect in actually tackling the core problem.
Statistics and percentages clearly show the percentage of backward class students admitted to the IITs under the existing quota system that actually graduate out from these institutions is in single digits as a majority of them drop out as they just can’t cope up.
The crux of the problem is we want to uplift the poorer sections of the society If that is what we want to do then we should focus our energies starting from the primary education of the child itself and strive to ensure that all the poor children can afford and avail of the education the doctors children can avail off. This is where the subsidies and the government funding have to be directed. No father should have to choose which child he has to send to school. Here is where our government has to come in and give all the financial support to the primary schools to provide quality education to the underprivileged, subsidize their books ensure that up to the age of 15 the education of the children who cant afford it is totally subsidized and taken care of by the government.In a broad sense leave no stone unturned to create a level playing field. Only then can we hope to find some realistic progress in uplifting the standard of living across all sections off the society.
"We have to admit that equal opportunity comes from equal grounds."
This is exactly what I am trying to say instead of trying to create the equal ground by building a strong foundation we want to achieve to it through short cuts
Quotas will only create unrest help divide this already divided country and put it on the fast track to self destruction.
The competition will never be against an 80% vs 40%. If we look at the realities the extreams will always get what they deserve. If you are 90% you will get what you want no matter what. The real competition when the quota is will be between 70% vs 65%. Yes agreed in such cases 70% might loose out but that is not by much he is not loosing out to a very undeserved candidate. And that is where giving a bit of nudge to that 65% will help.
The cases where actually a 40% taking a seat of a real 80% will be very very rare. There is always a lower cutoff in every selection.
Yes the case of streagthing the primary education does help but do you think it will help so much. Don't you think the real difference comes from home environment which does include cases of getting the best coaching classes and best of materials help. How far will you go to create a level playing field. There never will be. Its too deep.. to unfair.. to uneven. You have to create artificail platforms somewhere.
About them dropping out.. i think it is Ok if they drop out.. rather then no being given a chance at all. And mind it as i mentioned above the difference will not be as much as it is made out to be. In competitions like IIT a score of mere 2 marks can decide as to who will be in and who is out. So a guy who scored 70 at entrace would no be in a very better position then a guy who came in instead of him with 68. and the results show these bottom guys whoever they are UC or LC will always suffer. In fact most of the sucides that we are hearing from high pressure IIT environments are not showing any particular Cast bias.
And again to judge a guy intelligence by his marks scored or try to peg his ability level to marks scored in any exams seem unfair. You must look at where the guy started from. What was at his disposal, what were his tools. To compare the abilities of a guy shooting with a Remington rifle to a M40 in a compitition is rather unfair. The coaching classes, the home environment, the kind of schhols they go to. This all makes a difference.
Common.. I am not asking for sky..i am just asking for a fair shot at it. Or maybe a handfull of it.
Evolution just ensures survival of the fitest. It follows no ethics.. no morals.. Evolution has brought a Lion to kill all cubs of a lioness from her previous mate so that she can mate him. Evolution taught a herd of horses to discard and remove from the herd the older and injured animals coz they are liability and slows down the group. We are humans.. we have concience.. we can decides and choose between survivals of the fittest vs survival for all.
Vikas san i would like to reflect on what this quota means exactly in the present context
The major carrot being doled out with the OBC quota is the seats in the elite medical engineering and management institutes
IITs/IIMs since inception are already having reservations in place for the backward classes.To be more specific for the SC/STs 22.7% of the total seat quota. Now with the recent SC ruling the quota for OBC(totally different from SC/ST) has been made 27% effectively pushing up the reservations in our premier institutions to approximately 50%. . In my personal opinion if our premier institutes supposed to churn out the brains to drive the country forward need to have 50% of their seats reserved something is seriously wrong.At this point i am left wondering who has the remington rifle and who has the M40.
The cutoffs for the reserved quota is 10% below the cutoffs for the general quota its not 2 -3 marks but a whole 10 % difference
Now the government in making this new legislation wants to please everybody so what it has done is to offset the loss of general category seats owing to this increase in reservation it has increased the total number of seats and thus the tagline the general category seats wont be affected . Talking numbers again it would mean a 50% increase in the intake of the IITs.
We will build the buildings and the hostels to accomodate this increase in number.Now the question is where will we find the faculty to compensate for this increase in students? are they going to miraculously appear? i guess not so that would mean the existing faculty would have to manage with the 50% increase in students effectively reducing the already stretched teacher student ratio and taking out exactly what makes it so special studying in these great institutions.Since i have not had the opportunity of studying in these institutions From what ever i have read about these institutes i have understood that it is these very interactions with such high calibre faculty that play a very important role in shaping and churning out great minds.
After 60 years of quotas instead of improvement being seen and people needing quotas reducing, we have a peculiar scenario where the quotas have actually gone up. Logically if this is happening there must be something wrong with the entire quota system in the first place.
I have tried my best to see the good from this quota system . However all i see is a fight to create classes to qualify under the OBC quota ,further division of the people, increased corruption to get the OBC certificates, quality of our premier institutes degrading(the teached student ratio problem).
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