5, 10, 25, 50 &… still counting

Few days back the HR Minister Mr.Arjun Singh drafted the bill to increase reservations for OBCs, SCs & STs in all institutions including the prestigious IITs and IIMs. Many people, from students to professors have vociferously opposed the change, which gives only 50% of seats for the general category. Is fair enough for the people belonging to the general category? Are the political parties right in supporting this? Should caste be criteria nearly 60 years of independence?

The facetious facts…
Now for the facts first! Currently the reservation levels at IIMs and IITs are around 25%. So how does this 25% of the batch perform?

In IITs 60% of the students who have backlogs (and hence complete the degree in more than 4 years) are students from the ‘privileged’ 25%

75% of the privileged ones in IITs have GPAs in the range of 5 – 6.5 whereas the average is 7 – 8. This in spite of the fact that they spend a whole one year in a preparatory course.

Netas… stop the pander please!

Agreed, that you have to keep most of the people happy to regain your vote bank but not this way. Mr.PM, if your dreams of achieving a 10% economic growth year on year are to be true, this is a huge step backward!! The other day I watched Ram Vilas Paswan on NDTV, telling how important it is to have this kind of reservation to uplift the people. Though this may seem to be right, it is not… simply because the people who make use of the quota are either rich or have been uplifted in the past 50 years due to similar quota laws. And then we also have the opposition BJP which is opposing this move in a different way i.e. BJP wants the quota to be extended into more colleges. Also BJP clearly stated that it will not support any religion based quotas (which is good!). But then the verdict is clear: Regardless of the country’s future make use of the quota system to gather votes

Better implementation?

One professor from IIT was frantically telling the media about how the ‘privileged’ ones couldn’t qualify for the campus interviews due to poor GPA. Now what is the use of pushing an underperforming student along with the cream and have him perform badly? It will only dent his confidence even more. Politicians must understand that the strength of the tree lies in its roots. The government spends a puny 2% of GDP on education. This has to be increased. Also it makes more sense to have reservations for economically backward in schools. Every school must have a 25% reservation for the economically backward irrespective of the caste / religion. The cost for this must be borne by the government. If these people do well in the nascent stages there is every possibility that they will improve with time. If this gets implemented, I am sure there will be more people who deserve seats in IITs but may need financial help to pursue studies. Here is where we can have some reservation… again based on economic status alone. Mr.PM, this is the meaning of upliftment!!