Why should there be reservation at all? Arjun Singh has no specific answers. Nor is he supposed to have. As is expected from a person of his caliber, he could just avoid questions in an interview with Karan Thapar. Read a comment here that says “OBCs constitute 52% of India’s population and it is proposed to give them 27% reservation.” Fine, if that necessitates reservation, why not do it the other way? Make x% reservation for the so-called upper caste? Or reserve seats for every caste and religion, and then for political parties, too, may be!
I’d have the idea, “who cares for caste anymore”, unless I read some ‘interesting’ blogs. Some of these have links below.
The OBCVoice blog must have something in favor of the reservation. I had tried to read it, but it’s way too long. And it’s chiefly a reply to some other blog. Anyway, I found it worth-mentioning here. If anyone dares to read the entire post, do let me know the gist. This post seemingly talks ’bout the OBCs of South India. The next one talks ’bout Bengal.
History, like god, requires no proof. No one would ever know the ‘truth’ ’bout Aryan Invasion or ’bout Mary Magdalene. This post takes that liberty to ‘tell’ us the history in his own way:
Well this is the scenerio which was wanted by Shayma Prasad Mukherjee and Meghnad Saha and other caste Hindu leaders who threw Netaji out of India aligning with Gandhi and Nehru to complete the task. They trapped well Fazlul Haq and stimulated the origin of Muslim league in dacca and the concept of two nation`s theory. Only Netaji, CR Das and fazlul Haq could have stopped partition.The ruling classes in Bengal were succesful beyond doubt in alienating leaders like Fazlul haq and Jogendra nath Mandal who mobilised Hindu Muslim praja to overthrow the caste hindu Zamindary.
No wonder that this person knows some other version of history than I do. Nearly every neighborhood in India has a unique version of Indian history. And this may be true for the entire world. So much for this post. It’s more unreadable than the first one I mentioned. If this is showcasing ‘OBC pride’, I have nothing more to say!
Let’s see what JNUDalits have to say (wow! seems like they love the name ‘dalits’!). They have used some wonder words. The anti-reservation protest is ‘an assault on democracy’! Long live such ‘assaults’ if the face of democracy is so ugly. Wonder if ‘democracy’ means reserving certain things for certain group of people, and let others fight for the remaining (where the privileged group may also claim their stake, even beyond the reservation)! I invite anyone of the signatories of this post to write to me if they are still under the illusion that this reservation is a ‘progressive’ step. Try this part:
Although we know that we have to attack the Brahmanical forces who in the name of ‘Equality’ are assaulting the very democratic character of this nation, our first task is to remove the mask of the Brahmanical forces who call themselves as progressive. It is then only we can fight a real battle against the Brahmanical forces and save India’s democratic character. A silence on the part of the JNU students’ movement is giving wrong signals to their sympathizers, as well as to the reactionary Brahmanical forces. It is high time that all the progressive, democratic minded students come together to fight against these Brahmanical forces who are ready to subvert the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, on which the Indian democracy is based
‘The Custodian of Knowledge and Thoughts‘ :-p has some thoughts on reservation, too. While this post is not as absurd as the previous ones I’ve mentioned, it has always avoided the question, why, at all, should we need reservation in the higher education (and job)?
Why is this reservation unfair?
First of all, why should a certain group of people get more privilege than others when we claim to be a ‘democratic’ country?
Second: Is equality the answer to the age-old wound of the ‘lower castes’, or revenge through reservation?
Third: No need to go to the question of merit. Let’s assume that the SC/ST/OBC people are as intelligent as the ones from the ‘upper castes’. Now, what may impede them from getting into higher education? Money? The same problem may be there for an ‘upper caste’ student, too. And everyone, whose household income is below a certain limit, may be entitled to some funding provided s/he has excelled in the previous level of education. Why should a SC/ST/OBC get more privilege than a poor ‘upper caste’ person if that ‘upper caste’ person has better academic records?
Of course, there may be loopholes in merit+need based funding system (we are talking ’bout India anyway!). People may fake the household income. But that won’t favor a certain caste! Moreover, a lot of people now change their surname (and caste!) by law. A lot of people use fake SC/ST/OBC certificates.
Fourth: Why shouldn’t we have reservation for Muslims and Christians, too? A lot of the Indian Muslims and Christians have been converted from SC/ST/OBC and live in as good/bad a condition as any SC/ST/OBC. Is it their fault that they got converted to other religion? Should they be punished for embracing other religion?
Fifth: Why at all do we need to reserve seats for anyone? At any level, of education and service, we should only focus on merit (often judged by some test scores etc) and record at the previous level(s). If someone is eligible through these and needs financial support, that should better be provided. This way there won’t be compromise on quality/merit. The only place where SC/ST/OBCs may be allowed to get some reserved seats (not 50% anyway. Wonder what had prompted Dr Ambedkar to mention such an absurd figure!) is primary schooling.
Sixth: Caste-based reservation makes people more aware of castes. Aren’t we to forget about castes and ‘be equal’ in a ‘democratic’ country?
With this reservation policy, the Indian ‘government’ has reconfirmed that it is dedicated to uphold the tradition of idiocy and insanity!
. Informed . Opinions . 