Reservation saga continues

I have been following the reservation debate in India and it is disgusting what self-serving individuals like Arjun Singh will do for a few votes and to get close to the feet of his "Most Favored Master" in Delhi.

All these protests, all this divisive shit so one guy can further his political ambitions?
Truly disgusting! Are one man's political ambitions enough to endanger the fragile cohesion in a billion strong country? Evidently they are...and his political masters do nothing to rein him in or chuck him out.
Rather than increasing total number of seats in central institutions Manmohan Singh and Sonia should show their commitment by throwing out dolts like Arjun Singh flat and square on his ass.

No data is collected or currently available to understand the socio-economic performance of OBCs in Indian society. It is a self defeating assumption that if the title OBC is associated then he/she must be badly off. Most of the OBC seats seem to be taken not by the poor and worthy but by the "creamy layer" of OBC strata. Such individuals might have taken benefit of such lax reservations for generations on end. There is no mechanism to stop such individuals, who have gained from the system once, to stop mooching off the mammaries of the welfare state again and again.

Certainly, you can see the rationale why many of the truly SC/ST/ VJNTs need some reservations...cut the pie by class or caste and they seem to come out the losers in society. They do need a helping hand...but the helping hand needs to be in the shape of empowerment and not in the shape of alms or crutches.

Reservations by themselves are not very wrong...but doling it out on the basis of caste certainly is. And it is obviously the politicians pandering to the whims and fancies of their caste based vote banks. If reservations have to be fair in nature they need to be based on class or socio economic ability. There are many "higher caste" individuals who have as less a say in the system as some of the SC/STs yet there is no effective mechanism to give them a helping hand yet a rich OBC kid, who goes to school in a chauffeur-driven car can take advantage of reservations, albeit with the small irritance of having to produce a "No creamy layer" certificate.
In India's corruption riddled system, such a document is easily procured.

Further, increasing seats to accomodate new reservations so that the total no. of open merit seats are not reduced is not a sustainable activity. Every seat is tied not only to costs but also to resources a student needs to actually learn something- instructor-to- student ratio, hostel facilities, class rooms, laboratory and computing resources, patient beds (for medical education) are all vital factors.
Randomly increasing seats will only serve in diluting the learning potential for all involved.
Also it will bring out more graduates with the strong credentials (IIT, IIM) but not the skill sets. This will further result in the brand name of these institutions being tarnished...brand name not only in the marketing sense but the true underlying competency assumed to be associated with graduates of these institutions.

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Ahmedabad: The Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad “cannot increase the number of seats at this juncture”. Institute director Bakul Dholakia said, “It had its plate full.’’ While the Centre has been talking about an increase in intake of students in elite institutes to ensure that general category remained unaffected while implementing the reservation for OBCs, IIM-A feels it is already brimming. “IIM-A has been on a massive expansion drive. From 180 PGP students in 2002, it has in creased its strength to 280 during its 2006 intake, including 30 students in the agri-business management programme. By 2007, the total intake will be 400, including the oneyear executive MBA programme, PGPX, that will increase its intake from the present 60 to 120,’’ said Dholakia. “In 2007, there will be about 800 students on the IIM-A campus, with 500 students in the first and second year post-graduate programme, 60 students in the ABM programme, 120 in the PGPX programme and about 80 in the doctoral programme. Apart from these, there are participants in the numerous management development programmes for executives that range between one week and a month,’’ said Dholakia. “We require hostel facility to accommodate each students studying in the institute. We have plans to start a management course for bureaucrats with the intake of about 50,’’ he added.
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India has no shortage of political Shylocks who will go out of their way to extract their pound of flesh...but there is only so much flesh that a golden-egg-laying-goose has. After 10 Arjun Singhs have doled out 75-80-85% reservations in Parliament, higher level professional education, private sector and public sector jobs...what next?
What will these vultures gnaw, tear and bite at next?
There will be no more freebie left to give out.

But this would have effectively killed merit in the system. At the end of the day you need merit and knowledge to run an enterprise in a global setting, you need merit to understand a medical condition and treat it, you need merit and knowledge to build a 22.5 km bridge through the sea.

The reservation may get you into the seat that is responsible for all these actions...but do I want someone who got 51% in his final medical test and got admission to a Surgical residency on reservation operating on me?
I don't think so. I don't really care if the person was disadvantaged, my life is at stake and I'm not thinking of social equality and opportunity here. i'd be thinking of finding someone who can save my life..I have a feeling so does Arjun Singh. But Arjun Singh with either his horded or inherited wealth can afford to fly off to the US or UK for medical treatment...most of us can't!

Without being casteist just look at the difference between protests by pro- and anti- reservation groups.

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ToI 20 May 2006
In Patna, more than a hundred pro-quota agitators marched towards the Dak Bungalow crossing around noon, accusing the media of being biased against them. Two antiriot vehicles and policemen followed them. The protesters went on the rampage and damaged about a dozen cars, including those parked outside The Times of India building. At the Dak Bungalow crossing, they clashed with mediapersons and TV crew, alleging that the media and police were “hand-in-glove’’.

In Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, a candlelight march taken out to protest the reservation policy on Friday night turned ugly when a scuffle erupted between students supporting the quota and those opposing it.
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On the other hand protests against reservations have been uniformly civil across the country.
As far as I know there has been no instance of any violent activity by anti-reservations protestors.

More on this later...