RESERVATION & BEYOND

The Congress has lost its traditional vote bank & what all is it not doing to regain it! Reservation is just an effort to lure back d lost voters. Reservation has damn-all to do something with balancing society-it has everything to do with winning elections.We all have had enough of "merit Vs caste/quota" debates dating back to the heydays of Mandal Commission.So i'm gonna spare u of all this.I decide toanalyze the debate from a totally different perspective which gives a vivid picture of contemporary India-


1>The entire debate is characterized by hypocrisy; by self-interest dressed up as ideology. At one level, it is the Dalits who talk of social justice but actually only support the proposals because they benefit from them. And at another, it is the upper castes that talk about merit but are only worried about getting their kids into medical school. But there’s another, more significant, level. If you say that quotas are necessary to restore social balance and order, then u must apply this principle across all categories. And yet, nearly everyone uses the argument selectively. You will find hundreds of TV-friendly activists and fiery feminist dial-a-quote peddlers who will tell us that seats must be reserved in Parliament for women to restore the social balance. Ask many of these same women about caste-based reservation in jobs -- or even in Parliament, for that matter -- and they’ll suddenly sing a very different tune. So,reservation based on gender is okay.But caste-based reservation is regressive, apparently. Or, ask the backward leaders in the BJP who tell us that more castes should be included in the reservation list why the same arguments should not be used to secure reservation for Muslims. After all, they are much worse off than most backward castes on every parameter. But not only will the BJP refuse to concede the logic but even the Congress will pretend that ‘social justice’ only applies to Hindus.

2>The founders of modern India -- men like Jawaharlal Nehru -- had a vision of a country where caste would soon become irrelevant. In the 1970s and for much of the 1980s, as electoral mandates cut across caste lines, that vision seemed to be coming true.Then, after Mandal, everything changed. Today, Indian politics is about caste.But the problem with today’s caste-based reservation is that every Indian will now need to know his caste even before he learns what his blood group is: his education and his job will depend on that knowledge.I find it extraordinary that the Congress -- which Arjun Singh represents -- has so completely betrayed Nehru’s vision. And I think that it is a sad commentary on modern India that nobody even thinks that this is worth commenting on.

3>In the bad old days of 95 per cent income tax, urban land ceilings and wealth tax,the tragedy of Indian politics was that the politicians seemed to think that India's problems were about distribtuion.In fact, they were about production. The way ahead was not to redistribute the little that there was but to free the economy so that we could produce much more. That way, there would be more to go around and we would not need penal tax rates, foolish laws like FERA and income tax raids.Fortunately for us, Dr Manmohan Singh saw the point in 1991 and the Indian economy is now booming. The same holds true for reservation. We must be the only country in the world where every parent is traumatized by the prospect of getting his or her child into school or college -- not because of the expense but because of the scarcity of seats. Indians value education. So why don’t we have more schools? Why doesn’t the government spend its money on more colleges?If college seats were not so scarce, then nobody would get so agitated about reserving seats on a caste basis. But our politicians have failed to translate the lessons of economic liberalization into the education sector. So, the scarcities continue. And all solutions are framed in terms of redistributing scarce seats.

4>As opposed as I am to the current reservation proposals, I have to say that I find the attitude of much of the urban middle class deeply disturbing and, at a more primal level, loathsome and revolting. In the last five years or so, the Shining India of the towns and cities, of the mega-malls and mobile phones has grown increasingly insular. Most of us have never known so much prosperity. But rather than opening our eyes to that part of India that is not Shining, the money has made us petty, selfish and greedy. We look to Manhattan /Seattle for our reference points; and we forget the debt-ridden farmers who kill themselves a few hundred miles from our homes.This attitude shows up in everything that Shining India does.
And the reservation debate is no different. Once again, it has become a them-and-us issue. And once again, the urban elite has failed the nation by not voluntarily offering some form of affirmative action for the less privileged. Of course, I oppose reservation. But I am often ashamed to stand next to the self-satisfied, rich people who share my position. Because it isn’t reservation that they are really against. They oppose everybody who is poor, who is disadvantaged, and who is not like them.


5>If it is true, as this government claims, that 60 years after independence, the backwards still have not got social justice, then whose fault is it? For something like 50 of those 60 years, the Congress was in power. How come Arjun Singh and his Congress pals did nothing till last year?

There's not much to be proud of,is there??