General Category??? God Bless you!!!

Our present government is panning to go ahead with the Mandal-II policy, which would reserve 49.5% of seats in educational institutions like IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and IIMs (Indian Insitute of Management) for the scheduled casts, scheduled tribes and other backward classes; leaving just the remaining 50.5% seats for the vast number of people who come under the general category.

This policy, if implemented after the assembly elections next month, would spell doom to many dreams of youngsters. The competition for the general seats would be cut throat, where people with even 99 percentile scores in CAT would not be able to make it to the IIMs; but the backward cast can get into IIMs by scoring much less.

I know how it feels when someone who has scored lesser marks than you get better education. I had taken my Engineering Entrance Examination in Tamilnadu in 1998, in which I had performed very poorly – ranked 22,272 out of some 60,000 students who took the examination.

Tamilnadu boasts of the highest reservation in educational institutions – 69% - due to which once the overall rank list is published, a separate rank list for the backward cast students are published. One of my friend had scored in the 27,000’s when the overall rank list was published, but his rankings jumped into the 13,000’s when the rank list for the backward classes were announced.

Thus, he was able to secure admission in a government college where he was able to complete his studies at 1/10th of the amount that I had to spend, studying in a private college. The irony in the story is that his family was economically well off than mine.

In the same way, the present reservation policy will also prove ineffective to solve the real issue that should be solved. Many students, who are economically well off and academically below par, would be able to gain admission into the most prestigious institutions of the country. Whereas there would be thousands of students who would not be able to complete proper primary education in the country.

Reservations in Government jobs and educational institutes was suggested as a means to uplift the backward casts by different commissions in the 70’s. Dr. Ambedkar was one of the members of the commission, which vouched for the reservation of government jobs for the scheduled casts and scheduled tribes. When he penned the suggestion, he had said that the reservations should be for the next 10 years, but out politicians have used this to stay in power.

After years and years of misuse, common people of the country have failed to understand that reservation is no solution to providing better living conditions for the backward cast community, it’s just a gimmick being used very well by the politicians to stay in power.

As long as our politicians are self-centered and bother only about staying in power and making their pockets bigger and bigger, our country is not going to progress. With new policies like these, the cream of our country’s talents would be forced to search for better options outside the country, which would again impair our country’s progress.

The government is proposing to increase the number of seats in IITs and IIMs to counter the new policy, but I am not sure that this would help in anyway since the overall standard of the institute would be brought down. There have been numerous cases in the past where people from reserved categories have not been able to cope up to the pressures of IIMs and IITs; the main reason being lack of proper primary education. As long as our government neglects primary education, there is no solution to the problems of the reserved category.

Education should be provided to all, irrespective of religion, cast, creed, race and economic & social status. There should be only one parameter to judge students – MERIT.