Reservations are good : BUT for booking tickets and getting a place in restaurants !

A few days back I went to get the form of a B-school that cost Rs. 1200 and as I waited I noticed another candidate wearing a branded t shirt , with a hair style that would suit a Hollywood hero who got the same form for rs 600 thanks to special quotas. Is the government helping the economically and socially backward classes? Sure! to get the next branded thing on the shelves of the malls. This may have been an exception but it is a reality. In medical schools , the IIT’s and now the IIM’s even in the faculty of of high ranked institutions like JNU merit is being compromised. There was report of how seats in JNU went vacant for the year for certain courses due to reservations , the existing students had taken admission elsewhere and no one from the (under?)priviledged category had taken admission later. Those vacant seats stand testimony to numerous lost opportunities.

Equal opportunities, the place where it all begins , well shouldn’t then we begin from the beginning ?should not the whole process of creating opportunity start from the basic primary level of education instead of this dismal patch-up work done as a remedy. “The roof may collapse any minute,” exclaimed a teacher at the Government Primary School located in Vijayanagar Colony in Hyderabad as reported in a daily. According to the Selected Educational Statistics (2000-2001), after spending several thousand crores on elementary education, the government has been able to bring down the dropout rate in primary schools by only two per cent in 10 years. Why not raise the standards of the government aided primary schools where quality education can be received ? The government chooses to ignore problems of high dropout rates , low literacy rates and yet considers reservations as the only solution.Why not remove the numerous barriers that some institutions erect based on religion, income etc? Why not pay the teachers their dues? Why create an inefficient lot and then cushion them with quotas etc? Wouldn’t it be a matter of pride if they did not have to “achieve” through quotas but on their own ability ? But no, that would mean a step against corruption, against convention. Declaring an increase in the quotas is what can perhaps be described as the “ostrich syndrome”, we bury our faces oblivious to the real problem, it is a self-imposed blindness. Declaration of an increase in the quotas is so much easier than bringing about a structural reform, after all every thing dies down after a few student agitations, media coverage , all efficiently quelled by the “authorities” . When will we realize what it is doing to our nation? We are compromising heavily on quality. India cannot prosper unless it stops discriminating , and creating professionals who gain benefits for generations, acquire wealth but still keep on benefiting and , to put it simply, inefficient in most cases .