The Reservation Question

Hi! Here's my take on the reservation issue:

My buddies in college are so active in their protest in this furor against reservation and quota, and they are always so well versed in their protests, that I imagined that it was quite enough for me to just sing along with them…after all what they were straining their lungs about was quite what I would want to say as well. So I took the easy way out, and sort of played along with the whole thing…this was until I came across this talk show on MTV India, where a couple of VJs were in town for the show and happened to have held hostage a few chaps from our college as well as some more form other colleges and institutions. I remember there was a guy from IIM, Calcutta who kept rationalizing things from an economic perspective (though they told me that’s not what is done in IIMs). Well, despite cravings to keep switching the channel back to a stupid colloquial movie, I was stuck on to this show somehow, and watched it till the end. The ideas, views and thoughts that were executed (read. Murdered) in this talk-show was amazing! I mean, students have ideas that Mao-ists are terrorists(!!!), politics is but what Greg Chappel did with Sourav Ganguly, and reservations are a necessary evil, and that student-protests are results of the movie “Rang De Basanti”!!!!!!!!!! I’m having a terrible urge to put more “!!!!!”s in there because, I cannot perhaps explain in words the shock I felt during that half hour…and the lingering amazement that is still hovering around.

After this, I kind of went numb….it seemed to me like we need pretences of “formula” laden movies to push us towards asking for what is ours? Does Nepal’s coup suggest it was because they saw some movie where folks of a monarchic country forced the throne to be abdicated and created a democracy overnight? With all respect to the movie making industry of the nation, I beg to differ…an influence and a direct consequence differs…
What those young students, my age, junior and seniors, had to say was pretty much what the entire nation’s student fraternity wants today…..EQUALITY…it is understandable, but there seems to be a serious lack of basic understanding why is it that we want it? What do we do with equality? Equality is but a myth….this reservation issue only means that education should be equal to everybody, the students cannot be equal, when were they? Haven’t we been taught from pre-primary to be self-sufficient and competitive? Then where’s the competition, if we are all equal? It is not so…the issue is EQUAL OPPURTURNITY not equality among students.

I remember in my second year of college, when the new batch was being admitted in the department, we helped the professors with the humongous process of form collection, analysis, and selection for the initial entrance tests, invigilation and then finally the core selection process. It was an enlightening fall of events…the results were not as brilliant as this year’s students, so we had to narrow down quickly and it was easy…choosing the cream of the lot, and fun too! But after the entire selection was done, our Head of Department received a letter from the authority regarding the quota to be filled….and then came the shock…forms were rejected, of students having scored no less than 75%, and in place were taken (with all my sympathy to those) students who were either from scheduled castes or scheduled tribes with percentages as low as 46% and 50%. Fair? I do not think so, had they applied with competitive marks…I probably wouldn’t be writing this today…but no, the system doesn’t work that way.

What can possibly be the explanation for this? And we are stumped with throw-backs saying it is the “Rang De Basanti” era of student protests. And who are these comments coming from…..the students themselves….brainwashed by a bigger fraternity of people who come from the Greg Chappel stable perhaps? Ha ha…