On Reservation

Blogging has opened up a wonderful avenue. It has enabled me to react and more importantly, contribute in my own small way to issues that are of concern to me. Needless to say, reservation is a highly contentious issue that holds sway over the lives of millions of Indians. Hundreds of doctors and medical students are taking to the streets to protest against our HRD minister's recent proposals. Here is my take on the issue.

Many many arguments have been put forth by both sides. Below I present a few ideas that I think have not been adequately considered.

Even after 60 years of religious implementation, the lot of the oppressed classes doesn't seem to be any better. Atleast renewed calls for greater reservation give us that impression. You might intelligently counter me thus, "You cannot correct mistakes made over 2 millenia in a mere 60 years".

Great! So what is the plan? You intend to stick to this lopsided system for a thousand years before there is any hope of redemption, do you? Are the forward class taxpayers being systematically subjected to their own ancient folly - denial of opportunity - so that a dalit born in 3006 A.D. will be an equal member of society?

When is there ever going to be an end to this practice? Will the lower castes ever rise up and say "Thank you! We are equals now."? The root of the problem is that reservation is what any manager would abhor - a project with NO VERIFIABLE TIME BOUND OBJECTIVES. Such a system can never work succesfully towards its goal, simply because there is no specific goal in the first place.

The government ought to bring out a clear policy stating that by the year 2yyy, x% of W caste population will be literate; z% will be earning Rs uuuuu/-, etc. Such clarity will enable concrete focussed action on many fronts, including optimal reservation. It will help us to confidently work toward a society where ultimately nobody would be backward. But this is not to be - neither at the government level nor at the level of backward communities. Therefore, all we do is to feed larger and larger chunks to insatiate dalits, Most BC, Utmost BC, Almost BC, Just-a-little BC, OBC and every other conceivable classification of backward communities.

Moreover, a specific quantifiable target will help us to ascertain whether our measures are really reaching the target population. Otherwise, city born affluent 'dalits' might walk away with all the reserved seats, leaving the distressed rural population high and dry. If our targets are not being met, we could re-evaluate or re-structure our approach in a time bound fashion.

Contrast this to the current scenario. There are frenzied, emotional and emphatic demands from various communities clamouring for reservation. We have created class after class of hypochondriacs skilled in aggressive emotional wrangling. We set out to instill confidence and the indomitable spirit that comes with equality in certain sections. Instead, we have opened a pandora's box of backward classes who all claim to be terribly oppressed, supressed and depressed! After 60 years, has even a minute subsection of the oppressed population come out saying that "we are happy now that we are uplifted. we don't need this anymore"? Rather, everybody is demanding a bigger pound of flesh.

In my humble opinion, EQUALITY CAN NEVER BE GIVEN to a people. It is for the people to rise up through the dint of untiring effort aided by unshakeable confidence in their abilities. Reservation, as it stands today, will never build this requisite confidence, it only undermines it.

We have entered into an unending spiral where more and more opportunities are being reserved for more and more communities. Parliament, local bodies, govt jobs, professional colleges, private colleges, IITs, IIMs, the private sector and so on and so forth. At this rate, we might soon have roads that are exclusively for the scheduled castes; commercial flights will need to have 30% dalits on board to take off; 50% of generated electricity will be given to dalit homes whether they have use for it or not and so on.

Consider the muslims' case. It is indeed true that a greater percentage of muslims is poor. The poor suffer a lot and have to be helped. But the question nobody asks is, why should the muslim poor alone be helped? Why not help the entire spectrum of the poor population? That would also help the muslims, wouldn't it? Instead, why not try novel approaches such as professional courses in madrasa education? Why don't the numerous muslim outfits do something about it apart from clamouring for reservation? With all due respect, why don't they wage Jihad against poverty, illiteracy and disease, as President Musharraf once asked? Reservation is a habit-forming venom, a quagmire that sucks one into indolent posturing rather than constructive action!

Let us come back to the IIT/IIM issue. At the risk of putting ideas into your heads, I put forth a hypothetical legislation - Dalits were denied transport and communication facilities over the centuries. Therefore, 50% of Indian luxury cars and camera-mobile phones are to be given to Dalits whether or not they have the money.
Imho, the above is as reasonable and sound as the proposal to reserve more seats in IITs and IIMs!!