Reservation of seats for the backward castes in government aided educational institutions has caused national uproar. Though I am firmly against the whole thing I just tried to test my debating prowess by writing both for and against the issue.


ANTI

Living in the dawn of the twenty first century, in the age of globalisation it becomes rather incongruous if one raises the topic of social discrimination. After all, such problems have already been more or less resolved. The battle against Apartheid is officially over and though there still are several instances of torture, religious terrorism and global wars, people have reached the stage when they can be finally labelled as civilised, the stage where global harmony is the keyword. Yet even amidst all the sheen and glamour of modernisation the shadows of social discrimination have not yet disappeared. In fact they have assumed more dangerous proportions. The oppressed have identified the loopholes and have started using them to their advantage. The word discrimination now has the prefix reverse.

In India, reverse discrimination has gone out of hand. Reservations had been made for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in order to grant them a certain degree of security and encourage them to further their level of education and thus bring about economic and intellectual growth in the country. Almost fifty years have passed since the enactment of the quota system. It was certainly a commendable step when it had been issued. India, freshly independent needed a high intellectual growth rate. And no doubt the policy of reservation was beneficial in certain ways. But today, such reservations have ceased to be even remotely progressive. Instead of identifying merit and talent the quota system has become a weapon for the below average students to land themselves in first class institutions often resulting in the displacement of the truly meritorious. Intellectual growth which was the primary objective of this act is now witnessing a downward trend as meritorious students are increasingly being ignored.

Recently the government introduced reservation for other backward castes ( OBC) in premium institutions like the IITs and the IIMs. This has caused national uproar as the progressive minded have raised voices in protest while the beneficiaries have not stopped smiling since. The SC/ST/OBC reservation has summed up to a record 49% which leaves only 51% of the seats for the meritorious. As a consequence the institutions which have assumed world class status due to their grooming and nurturing of some of the most brilliant minds in the country will have to be content with second hand status now since only 51% of the students will be selected on the basis of their intellect and the remaining 49% will continue to exploit loopholes and rise up the ladder.

The OBC lobby has assumed immense power over the last few decades with a prominent and decisive vote bank and shrewd representatives. Of course, they also have the support of the millions of below average students across the country who are now armed with enough ammunition to compensate for their lack of merit. A new age civil war has just begun. And for students like me, its time to sit back and await the punishment that has been meted out to us, that of reverse discrimination.



PRO


Intellectual growth is perhaps the most important requirement for a developing nation. Intellectual growth, will not only result in economic growth and development, but will also bring about the much needed development in the socio-political infrastructure. Wealth and welfare, the two primary requirements for any economy to flourish will both be achieved. In a country like India, which is diverse both geographically and socially, intellectual growth requires a lot of planning. The Indian society is heterogeneous and therefore it is very difficult to create a policy that will please all sections of the society. Also, it is not possible to please all sections of the society when one wants to bring about development. There are several historical evidences to support this statement. The abolition of sati, female infanticide, child marriage were all progressive measures, but they too faced severe opposition from the traditionally orthodox sections. If these measures had not been implemented just for the sake of pleasing a major section of the population, India would have still been a nation primitive in outlook.

Every step that is taken by the government is bound to be opposed. Sometimes the opposition is restricted to the opposition parties while sometimes it includes other diverse interest groups. And being a democratic nation, opposition does play a very important role, forcing the government to recheck and re-evaluate its policies. But the ultimate decision lies in the hands of the government which is constituted by the representatives of the citizens of the nation and therefore all decisions are in the best interests of the people and the country.

The reservation system is one such policy implemented by the government which in recent days has been facing severe opposition. This policy has been introduced to encourage the backward sections of the society to further their intellectual qualifications and hence in the macro level it is encouraging intellectual progress. There are just two opinions circulating in the country. Some are for and some are against the act. But both parties have their own interests in mind. A country will never progress if decisions are made purely at the micro level. Macro economic decisions are vital for national development and that is what the government is doing. Our prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, probably the most educated man in the country today, our president, APJ Abdul Kalam a prominent nuclear scientist all support the decision. Do you mean to say that they are wrong? Do you mean to say that they are incapable of making the correct choices?

It is very easy to criticize a policy, but we must also remember that every decision is made after a lot of deliberation. So until and unless we are armed with information that extends beyond the realms of the national dailies and news programmes, we are in no position to speak with emphatic certainty that what we say is the gospel truth. However we can scream and shout all we want. After all we are citizens of a democratic country and have the freedom of speech and expression. After all we ‘have’ to raise our voices against those political leaders that ‘we’ have elected to represent ‘our views!’