Friday, May 05, 2006

Myths of Reservations

A brief story:

4 men were staying togethar in a hut namely A,B,C,D ... A said i'll go to find some food .. Maybe even hunt .. I can't stay hungry ... the remaining three agreed .. They waited for a long time ... A didn't turn up .. so B said .. I better take this grass with me and look for some hungry animal which can give me something in exchange ..
When A & B went out ... C said to D ... instead of waiting for them let us do something... The hut is dirty so C said to D why don't you clean around .. meanwhile i'll attempt to light this hut with minimal resources which we have around ...

Finally A&B returned and C& D completed their respective JOBS .... and the day ended.
This soon extended and rules were made in which duties were fixed for a person without exchange .... son of A did A's job .. son of B did B's job and so on .. This absolute division of labour resulted in what we call as the great indian divide for the next 2000 years .... A,B,C prospered whereas poor D was made to suffer throughout .. he remained poor and soon became used to taking orders ....... A,B,C thus continued to relish their prosperity ... D did not bother to retaliate ...

Note: essentially all these were similar type of persons in the beginning ... (99% gene pool was same ... only 1% differed)


Modern world teaches you a lot many things .... In body ..when people say the most important part is not the brain,heart or lungs ... but the garbage clearing mechanisms ... D realized this that he was made to dirty work all along and ....

Cut to 2006:

A lot of Hue and cry is being made in the name of reservations these days.. People in India really love to form communities on orkut these days condemning reservations but when it really comes for a peaceful protest on the grounds of mumbai .. you find that people rarely turn up ... Leave that apart !! I have a few questions to ask all these protestors :

1) For the so called hard core reservation opposers i have a question : Why do you all fill the minority form when you go to united states ? why do you all claim benefits of US affirmative action programs ?

2) Why do you oppose reservation in all forms ? Do you think the best things in life happen by merit ? Do you believe that being able to score marks in such a skewed one dimensional entrance test makes you worthy ? Why don't you design entrance test capable of testing multiple qualities in a person ?

3) Why don't you proactively support and push through a petition supporting income-based reservation ? Why don't you attempt and use your surplus to help atleast one needy student in your life ?

4) Your ancestors have broken the circle of poverty by providence. Why are you not giving others a chance to break their circle of poverty by this scheme ?

5) You all give motivating lectures of team-work .. about how to help weaker team members .. Where is this implementation of this concept in practical life ?

The problem is accentuated by acute supply side problem where there no attempt to raise the number of seats of engineering colleges .... It is always the fear of commoditizing the entire structure .. but remember the situation is not good now either ... you throw a stone .. most likely it will hit an engineer ...

I agree that reservation in it's present form is helping a very narrow range of people to fulfill their selfish short-term motives ..... Let us beat it down and design a more acceptable form of reservation by not haggling in terms of percentages but going down to more systemic level ... Using reservations for helping the general population as a whole .... and bring that person D described earlier into an equivalent person.

4 comments:

Aravindan said...

agree with u

but i personally feel its tough to design a fool proof system. wat do u think? maybe we can have achat on this sometime later!

K7 said...

Illa da .... aravindan ...

Systems always has checks and balances .... It should act like a membrane to hold water .... take out the bad-ones but be flexible with the genuine good ones ... something our place-com rather we all should learn ....

Never harm in making a try ...

Vikrant Naik said...

the trouble is that the system as everyone says should be foolprrof. but the way its done is just that they r using the issue as a political gimmick. And those who really need it dont get it.
may be as someone said, you can have it for like 3 generations in a family.
but then increasing the percentage will surely not help...bcoz u cannot do away with talent...but ya,...whats more important is to channelise the effort for people who need it better...

btw have posted something new on me blog...which is not something serious...

Aravindan said...

@ ravi,

AK47 is me!!!!

aravindankrishnan47 was earlier my hotmail id!!!!