While discussing about equality and why equality is desirable. The question of reservation was bound to come up . We had discussed what led the constitution drafters to provide reservation to the lower castes, the previous week. We had also discussed the positive aspects of providing reservations to backward classes. So much was said by Sriram sir in support of reservations that we had to accept his arguments (the arguments were quiet strong though) But somewhere we felt that justice had not been done to the topic.
This week when the topic came up all of us except Devbrath were speaking against reservations.
devbrath on one side with Sriram sir to support him and all of us on the other side -not fair because they are the ones who do most of the talking during our discussions.
But this week's topic had hit the jugular vein and even Avinash spoke a full long sentence (breaking his previous record of 5 words)
Most of us supported the idea of giving reservations to the economically backward people who don't get equal opportunities, yet each of us opposed reservations in their present form .
The reason of our opposition being that backward classes are not always the ones who are poor or deprived of equal opportunities.
Devbrath opposed the argument saying that
-----backward people are mostly poor and their all relatives are also poor , even if they are rich
while other classes have relatives who are rich even if the become poor .
So upper classes who have relatives who are rich can get help from the rich relatives
and they can become rich again while, the backward people cant get help from their poor relatives
so if they become poor they can't get rich again----------
(whole of it in one breath ...just imagine!!) Most of us couldn't make much from this rich-poor-poor-rich-rich-poor equation. (but poor kaushik was totally unaware that he would have to explain it)
We quietly accepted what he said, that maybe this is an argument in favour of reservation.
As the discussion proceeded we tried to analyse whether the reservations really serve any useful purpose ? We noted that even though the country is progressing (as in seems from the ever growing sensex at least) the number of backward population seem to be ever increasing
As the people are becoming more and more economically sound(compared to the time
when reservations were put in place) the percentage of population entitled to reservations are ever increasing. This paradox however isn't at all confusing to a fellow who knows about Indian politics.
Many of us gave examples from our experiences that how some people who do not deserve the reservation take undue benefits from it. Though we could have continued the discussion but the mood of Diwali didn't let us.
Sriram sir assigned me the task of collecting statistical data on reservations.
Looking at the data i am a bit perplexed The data says that even though the %age of reservation (15.5% &7.5% respectively)given to SC's & ST's is nearly equal to their population. The OBC population (38.5% on average) is quiet large as compared to the %age reservation(27%) given to them. So why should we have issues with this small bit (which means at least 50%) of reservation.
The simple answer to this is that the question is irrelevant. We are against the whole concept of reservations on the basis of caste. We don't want that down trodden may not be uplifted. What we want is a just system where only those who deserve reservation get it. The same reason why we had advocated reservation for the economically backward classes.
Maybe that as Sriram sir said the other day that when someone from backward class who doesn't deserve the reservation gets the (undue) benefit from it others from the same caste are inspired from his story. But the question that haunts me is that how many undue benefits does it take to uplift the backward classes?
There 's no denying that this system is unjust and the injustices are never redressed .
The question i pose is this :
Are we even allowed to think that such blatant injustices will lead us to an equal society ?
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