It is April, elections are around the corner. Bingo! The vote-starved politicians of India has found another cheap, controversial trick to diffuse the focus of the voters from their crimes and inefficiencies. This time it is the reservations or quotas which were supposedly for eliminating the indifference and inequality between the upper caste and backward caste.
Long way back, education was reserved for only the forward caste and the backward caste were denied education and were meant to be only servants/slaves. Things changed, India became free, caste system is gone and it is the 21st century. To give an initial push to the unfortunate poor backward Indian citizens, the government at those days introduced the reservation system. It infixed a new life into them, thus uplifting their social status, self-value and self-confidence. Decades passed, the second and even third generation has come. There is now an upper class in the backward class and the reservations has created a backward class in the upper class. Now there isn’t any cast based discrimination anywhere. Any body can go learn or earn; only limited by their own ambitions and skills. Now if at all, if there is any discrimination, it is by the government and which is induced into the society as an upshot of it. The backward castes are looked upon so in colleges just because they stole some seats by force. The government supports them from school to job. The people who are availing the reservations now mostly are from well-off families, with both the parents having a decent government job, which again was got thru some reservation. Some states currently have upto 70% reservations. Perhaps you can now understand why most of people who can afford go abroad for education and eventually settle there (the brain drain)…huh!
Reservations were good, and still are good for the needy. Since all the citizens are now equally eligible for education, the only criteria for reservation should be their financial status and not caste. Again reservations should be intelligently prorated so that the normal citizens also get their just share to live well. Currently what the reservations mostly do is creating a lazy, rich and arrogant backward class, filled with inferiority complex. Sometimes they miss the respect they deserve as their success and achievements are attributed to their reservation by the society.
I sincerely feel the reservations and financial assistance needs to be there only for basic education. It must not be extended to professional education or higher education like IIM, Medicine, Engineering etc. There is a Chinese proverb that “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. So instead of fooling the people by such gimmicks, the government should rather improve the standard of the schools and other institutions run by the them, thus making sure that the poor (and not based on caste) also gets an education at par with the private ‘public schools’ which has astronomical tuition and other capitation fees. And a request to all those educated citizens who thinks the country will never change – cast your votes and make a difference, than leaving the decision to the 50% poor uneducated voting m'asses' who are left to decide the fate of the next emerging super power country!
I think reservations should be there in politics too ;-)
Long way back, education was reserved for only the forward caste and the backward caste were denied education and were meant to be only servants/slaves. Things changed, India became free, caste system is gone and it is the 21st century. To give an initial push to the unfortunate poor backward Indian citizens, the government at those days introduced the reservation system. It infixed a new life into them, thus uplifting their social status, self-value and self-confidence. Decades passed, the second and even third generation has come. There is now an upper class in the backward class and the reservations has created a backward class in the upper class. Now there isn’t any cast based discrimination anywhere. Any body can go learn or earn; only limited by their own ambitions and skills. Now if at all, if there is any discrimination, it is by the government and which is induced into the society as an upshot of it. The backward castes are looked upon so in colleges just because they stole some seats by force. The government supports them from school to job. The people who are availing the reservations now mostly are from well-off families, with both the parents having a decent government job, which again was got thru some reservation. Some states currently have upto 70% reservations. Perhaps you can now understand why most of people who can afford go abroad for education and eventually settle there (the brain drain)…huh!
Reservations were good, and still are good for the needy. Since all the citizens are now equally eligible for education, the only criteria for reservation should be their financial status and not caste. Again reservations should be intelligently prorated so that the normal citizens also get their just share to live well. Currently what the reservations mostly do is creating a lazy, rich and arrogant backward class, filled with inferiority complex. Sometimes they miss the respect they deserve as their success and achievements are attributed to their reservation by the society.
I sincerely feel the reservations and financial assistance needs to be there only for basic education. It must not be extended to professional education or higher education like IIM, Medicine, Engineering etc. There is a Chinese proverb that “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. So instead of fooling the people by such gimmicks, the government should rather improve the standard of the schools and other institutions run by the them, thus making sure that the poor (and not based on caste) also gets an education at par with the private ‘public schools’ which has astronomical tuition and other capitation fees. And a request to all those educated citizens who thinks the country will never change – cast your votes and make a difference, than leaving the decision to the 50% poor uneducated voting m'asses' who are left to decide the fate of the next emerging super power country!
I think reservations should be there in politics too ;-)
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