I run the risk of turning my nice blog into a reservation debate. But I really can't help it.
I was watching a TV programme which was "discussing" this issue and I noticed that the new weapon in such arguments is the screwing up of the word "merit". When anti-reservation folks shout that reservations affect the quality of students being taken in or employees being hired, the pro-reservation people sneer about the "meritorious" students from the upper-class and question the quality or otherwise of the non-reserved classes.
Even though this was touched upon in an earlier entry here, I want some place to shout back myself! Dudes, get this straight, reserved seats = non-meritorious candidates, period. I don't give a damn which class they are from, if they are coming in on the basis of anything other than a fair fight, I consider them of lesser quality than the rest. This is true of all quotas, I similarly look down upon management quotas, payment seats, NRI quotas, and all the rest.
The reserved candidates should be happy taking one single opportunity in their quotas. If someone has already got into a college on the basis of his caste, he has used an opportunity to "level the playing field", why does he need another quota to get a job? If he really is "meritorious" as opposed to the upper-class students, and was getting screwed because of his background, surely that deficiency has been rectified by getting him into college, giving him free education and books and calculators - all that's left is for him to prove himself to be as good as the rest. This merely illustrates why reservations don't work, giving something for free entails the risk of the receiver expecting more. The value of that which is given free is lost, the receiver no longer appreciates what he is getting, he starts taking it for granted and then starts expecting it as a right - "I deserve a lifelong secured job without necessarily doing any work, because I belong to this caste. Then I deserved promotions because of my caste. Then I deserve free education for my children because of my caste. They deserve jobs because of my caste."
On the same TV programme, someone who has availed reservations and has become moderately successful in life was asked whether his children would also study on the quota that he himself used. He did not say "no", he said "I'll leave the decision to them."
2 comments:
i am all for a meritocracy myself, but i think that a purely merit-based system will be unfair to some people. In your post, you seem to say "the meritorious smart people get screwed becasue of their cast". I look at it this way "The smart lower caste people aren't getting enough chances to convert their smartness into merit". So _SOME_ amount of reservations is justified (50% is insane.) Of course, the government should aim towards leveling the playing field, and systematically cut down on reservations. Of course, politics being what it is, this won't happen. I did my undergrad at IIT, and there were a few SC/ST students who put in an honest effort, and you could see that this small "gift" from the government, will actually impact the lives of their family members and them in a very positive way. Of course a large percentage of the SC/ST students in IIT were sons of IAS officers, and good for nothing.
I guess what you said as "fair fight" is not always fair when they always remain "reserved" for the privileged. Let us just make it a fair fight by not closing it against those who come from less privileged classes
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