Thursday, April 27, 2006

Reservation - For whom??

A lot of heated argument is taking place about Mandal II bill.
Well!! here is my two bit for the protest of this bill with some reasoning’s.

Negatives of having reservation!!
Entrenching reservation on basis of Caste directly attacks the national unity, it will do nothing but create further divisions between the untouchables and upper cast.
Those that deserve the seat through merit will be at a disadvantage. That will reflect on the repercussions of unqualified candidates assuming critical positions in society such as that of Doctors, engineers etc and their by increasing chances of more fatalities in these areas because we will be sacrificing quality.

Extending reservations in educational institutes public or private will help only a small few élite of educated Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs. Such measures do nothing to lift the mass (really poor/underprivileged mass) of people out of backwardness and poverty.

Reason!!
If a family (which can extend from Brahmin’s to Rajput’s to SC/ST or OBS) is poor, then the head of the family would like his son/daughter to assist him in the farm/labor so as to increase the total household income, rather than sending his son/daughter to institutes. This means that the reserved seats would fail to attract these poor chaps from acquiring education.
As a result these particular sections of people would continue to remain underprivileged.
However a few elite of educated Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs, whose family financial condition is little better would surerly benefit from this reservation system, but then at the cost of more/better eligible candidate belonging to Non-OBC category.

A more better approach towards upliftment of these backword sections (which can be Brahmins/Rajputs/SC/ST etc) would be to assist them by means of scholarships/book bank facility/free meals etc. This would lure poor family to send their son/daughter for education with the hope that they might save some fund from the scholarship money and that their expense on daily meals would be saved for that candidate of the house.
This means I am asking for reservations not in Seats but in Scholarships/food grants etc.

Caste or Class??
The entire scheme of this reservation in education has been formulated on basis of caste distinctions. It has been assumed with no statistical facts that in present India, people belonging to SC/ST/OBC caste system are poor and underprivileged, which in my opinion is totally incorrect considering the present socio-economic condition of India.
The definition of underprivileged should be derived on the basis of CLASS and NOT CASTE. And it is not difficult to gather this statistics. Tell me how many under the SC/ ST quota are first generation college goers or from households where income is below par?

Who is underprivileged??
This paper from Prof. Pradipta Pradipta Chaudhury clearly indicates that the literacy rate seems to be strongly inversely associated with ritual rank. i.e. Literacy percentage amongst lower caste people is more than in higher caste. However if we go by class then definitely the literacy percentage bears a direct relationship with it. i.e. Lower is the class, lower the literacy percentage.

A Flawed Report
A more serious drawback of the Mandal II bill is that it is based on the facts collected quarter century ago. The Mandal Commision established in 1979 by Janta Party had then submitted a report that estimated that 52% of the total population (excluding SCs and STs), belonging to 3,743 different castes and communities was ‘backward’. The point to note here is that the commision declared that “Since population figures along caste lines were not available beyond 1931, the Commission used the 1931 census data to calculate the number of OBCs”. This means we are undertaking reformative action on basis of 75 year old data. Nothing sounds more ridiculous to me than this.

Can’t we pick a more recent census data which provides details on the lines of age, sex, religion, marital status, educational status and disability, and use it to derive what percentage of the mass is underprivileged then finding the reasons and then thinking of whether to go for reservation system or not and if at all yes then on basis of caste or class?


Mandal Report - The fact
SS Gill was secretary, Mandal Commission and he writes in Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/2343.html

During its discussions the Commission was fully aware that reservations were only a palliative, and 27 per cent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs was only one of several recommendations. Briefly, other important recommendations were:

- the radical alteration in production relations through progressive land reforms;

- special educational facilities to upgrade the cultural environment of the students, with special emphasis on vocational training;

- separate coaching facilities for students aspiring to enter technical and professional institutions;

- creation of adequate facilities for improving the skills of village artisans;

- subsidised loans for setting up small-scale industries;

- setting up of a separate chain of financial and technical bodies to assist OBC enterpreneurs.

3 comments:

Vikram said...

this is it. Now is the time when the student community has to show its strong protest against the flawed reservation policy. The government cannt just pass on dumb bills to cater to its vote banks without facing its consequences.

Umesh Agrawal said...

Yes, and I am surprised why only medical college students are staging the protest. Were are the students from Engineering/ Bsc. BCom, Arts etc etc???

PriPat said...

Ever1 do wanna protest but no 1 wanna take lead thats where the probs arises.

U post was well explained with each and ever point.