Thursday, November 09, 2006

FEW CLARIFICATIONS

After reading the comments to my last post, I felt that need to write a post clarifying my views more clearly on the reservation issue.

1. I'M NOT AGAINST RESERVATION TO DALITS OR ANY OTHER OPPRESSED CLASS: I don't want the reservation to be revoked completely to the oppressed class for the following reasons.

a. Dalits were being oppressed for 1000s of years.
b. Even today Dalits are facing many problems in rural areas, like they are being denied to participate in temple festivals, they are not allowed to come into houses of so-called upper caste Hindus, they have separate glasses in tea shops and worse still, in certain Government schools, the dalit children are being forced to sit separately from the rest of the class.

2. I DON'T THINK RESERVATION BASED ON ECONOMY IS POSSIBLE IN INDIA:

Many have aired their opinion that reservation could be based on economy. But I don't think its completely feasible in Our country, where only 2% of the population pays the income tax. Therefore we will not be able to assess the economy level of the next 98% properly. Moreover even the 2% who pay the tax very few pay it properly ( Mostly workers in Govt, Public sectors and Private enterprises, who have no other option any way) So reservation based on economy,although would be a ideal scenario for reservation, is not realistic enough to be achieved in India at least for now.

EG. Sonia Ganhi, has filed in her election application that she doesn't own a car and only has around Rs.10,000 in cash. Hence if reservation is based on economy, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka, and their children and the children of many politicians, who according to their election application are very poor will get the reservation benefits, whereas most of the middle class people will not get any benefit.

3. WHAT DID I ACTUALLY TRIED TO CONVEY IN MY LAST POST?
I tried to stress that, if the really deserving and poor dalits living in rural areas have to get the complete benefits of reservation, then the creamy layer among the oppressed class needs to be removed out of reservation.

I will once again give a much simpler example to remove any doubts in your mind.

Assume in 1980 there were 5 dalits, A, B, C, D, E. All of them took the Medical entrance examination. Assume reservation for dalits is 20%, i.e one in every five. So only one among this five could get a seat based on reservation, and A got based on his higher mark among the other five, and become a successful doctor, where as the other 4 B,C,D,E remained in their villages and were poor.

Now all of them had 1 children namely A1, B1, C1, D1, E1. Logically A1 would have studied in best possible school and best possible coaching institute, whereas the others would have managed to study only in Local Government schools. Now again these five students take medical entrance examination and only one of them could get it based on reservation. 99% A1 will get it because of reasons so obvious to us. Thus poor Dalits will continue to remain poor. So by taking creamy layer out of reservation, I suggest A1 could be taken out of reservation, and he could compete with other students in Normal seats, and could still become a Doctor, if he has enough talent. On the other this would facilitate one of the four, B1, C1, D1,E1, to become a doctor, thus one more dalit family will become improved.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

SOME THOUGHTS ON RESERVATION

Last week, as I was just browsing through the channels, I listened to one of the most honest confession ever made by a Indian politician, in my recent memory. The person was Naqvi, one of the few Muslim leaders in BJP. He was speaking about terrorism.He said,

" When our Founding fathers of Constitution included Reservation, they also wanted a definite time period for it to come to end. But today, no party has the braveness to talk about that period, including my party."

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On this note lets move on to the recent Supreme Court Judgment on the Creamy Layer. In Tamilnadu, Dalit leaders like Mr. Thol. Thirumavallavan, leader of Dalit Panthers Of India, is protesting against the Supreme Court Judgement. I'm quite sure that these sort of protests would be going on now in all parts of the country.

I will now give you an illustration.

In the heart of the city, there was a big Hospital. The cardiologist who was working there is a Dalit, who got to such a post through reservation. He has gone abroad five times, his family has dinner at five star hotel every week end and is only son attends the best school in the city. He also attended all the coaching classes possible by the best of the institution in the city. In the medical entrance examination he scored 90.25%.

Around 200 km away from the city is a young coolie, who is a dalit. He is a registered member of Dalit Panthers Of India. His meagre income is not guaranteed every day, and many a nights his family has to go to sleep without a supper. His only son ( he has five daughters) studies in a Local Government school that has no teachers for many subjects. Since he has to take care of cattle in the evening he doesn't attend any tuition's. Still he some how manages to study hard and always come first in the class and at the end of it ,manages to get 90.24% in the Medical Entrance Examination.

Medical counselling is going on and there is only one seat left, that too in the SC Quota. One of these two students can only get. We say by taking the creamy layer out of reservation that student from village should get reservation. The so called Dalit leaders say that Creamy layer should not be removed and the Doctor's son should get the seat. Its time for you to think who is really wanting the Dalit to improve, and who want the Dalit to remain as they are now, so that they can use them as a Vote bank for years to come, never having to worry about the Time frame that our founding fathers of Constitution said about.