Hari the Hadron

Sunday, April 09, 2006

RESERVATION – BENEFICIARY THE POLITICIANS OR THE BACKWARD COMMUNITY

The Central Government has announced plans for Reservation in admission to seats in IIM, IIT and other Central Educational Institutions.Whose cause it is going to serve. Definitely not the cause of the economically Backward community. Concessions in fees on the basis of Economic Status is definitely welcome as I strongly believe that every citizen of this country should be given equal chance on merit get admitted to these institutions. But Reservation on the basis of a historically created, Religiously nurtured and Politically motivated Social status or caste is a crime, not only on the said community but on the country as a whole.

The fact is that these premier institutions give admissions only the basis of merit and it would be untrue to state that backward community students are denied admissions here. Then where is the room for caste based reservation where only merit and not caste or religion is the criteria.

In case of Reservation, Non-meritorious students would get admissions even if they fail in the entrance examinations. But that alone will not serve any purpose. The Government has to then reduce the pass marks for them in order to let them pass and complete the course. So the Reservation tag has to continue till course completion. So what thereafter. The students passing out with low marks are definitely not going to get placements in good jobs. The next step would be to introduce Reservations in pivotal senior executive posts in both public and private sector and if possible in foreign countries too, otherwise the whole purpose of the initial reservation would get defeated, if at all the purpose is to churn out economically successful IIM and IIT graduates within backward communities.

This ever extending act of Reservation briefed above would have two major implications. The first one is that the politically defined Backward community people would remain attached to their BC tag for generations to come, thanks to Reservation. The second implication is how fragile our economy would become, at the hands of less equipped people holding pivotal posts, in a liberalised scenario. This is not to imply that Backward Community people are less equipped, only that people coming with the comfort of Reservation at various stages are definitely less equipped. Finally we will end up again as an under-developed economy with only one caste and that of economically backward.

It is time for the politically defined Backward community people to wake up and break away from the vicious circle of backwardness that these politicians have been weaving on them for the last more than five decades of Independence. It is time for them to learn and earn their share in this gallopping economy and remove the inequality, definitely with adequate support in the form of fee concessions to economically backward and intensive coaching for those belonging to educationally backward families.

Today be it education, employment or any other field of activity where preference is given to merit, as is the case in private sector, nobody bothers about the caste, community, religion etc. It is the Government sector, where every form of application still has a column where you are required to state either your caste and class. If the Government is so keen about creating a casteless community, let them stop talking about caste first and make such differentiation at any level a punishable act. I am sure there would be no such thing as Backward Community in another decade.

Today be it a Member of Parliament or top Executive posts in Private Sector or professionally successful Civil Servants, you can find a lot of people from the Backward Community earning these posts not out of Reservation, but with their competency. By the way does the Indian Parliament have adequate Reservations for Backward Community ?

RESERVATION IN ANY FORM AT BEST IS ONLY A NUTRIENT FOR NURTURING CASTE BASED SOCIETY.

6 Comments:

  • Hi Everybody,please feel free to comment. Even criticism would be a compliment.

    By Blogger hari, at 5:27 AM  

  • Good work Hari. Keep on writing may be people will wake up ....I doubt though... but atleast you are trying. Thanks!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:27 PM  

  • Hello Anonymous,

    Would love to have your name and identity. The fact that I have received atleast one comment itself is a moral inspiration for me.

    By Blogger hari, at 10:03 PM  

  • Hari, just to touch base and hope that you are all doing fine. I hope a lot of good things are around the corner for you and your family. Take care :-).

    By Blogger Krish, at 10:08 PM  

  • As I understand the original makers of the constitution hoped to give a head start to the hitherto neglected sections through reservation to right historic wrongs and hoped that they would compete on alevel witha ll ina few years. But over the years more castes have been added to the list and none is getting dropped.
    Where did we go wrong?

    By Blogger Usha, at 2:53 AM  

  • We must investigate the term "merit".Is "merit" just a score in entrance exams at age of 17?

    Take the claim of "merit based" entrance to all IIMs and dozens of other institutes.

    The CAT exam is based on the SAT exam in the USA . It has been proved beyond doubt that the SAT test is culturally biased . Blacks and hispanics do poorly at it year after year .

    If a student who is eligible for admission to IIM on the basis of his CAT score, were to take the same CAT exam in which he/she cleared in a language that he/she did not understand then he/she would be at a disadvantage compared to someone who was schooled in that language . Not knowing that language does not mean you lack the capacity to clear that exam.

    Approximately 25 % of CAT test is about English! Another 25 % is about English Comprehension!!!! There you are !!!! About 50 % so called aptitude test is a hoax for someone who is from a non-english speaking background .

    This is how the CAT like the SAT is discriminatory .

    See the full form of SAT …Scholastic Aptitude Test . The problem is aptitude testing is not so simple . There is no test on earth which can reliably tests aptitude .

    Aptitude tests such as the SAT have a historical tie to the concept of innate mental abilities and the belief that such abilities can be defined and meaningfully measured. Neither notion has been supported by modern research. Few scientists who have considered these matters seriously would argue that aptitude tests such as the SAT provide a true measure of intellectual abilities.

    It was found that people could be coached to better their scores at SAT . The name SAT …Scholastic Aptitude Test could not be correct . So under such valid criticism the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test, since a test that can be coached clearly did not measure inherent "scholastic aptitude", but was influenced largely by what the test subject had learned in school. Even the College Board which conducts the SAT has beaten a hasty retreat.This was a major theoretical retreat by the College Board conducting SAT, which had previously maintained that the test measured inherent aptitude and was free of bias.

    About ten years back , however, even the redundancy of the term assessment test was recognized and the name was changed to the neutral, and non-descriptive, SAT. At the time, the College Board announced, "Please note that SAT is not an initialism. It does not stand for anything."

    The framers of these SAT tests assumed that intelligence was a unitary inherited attribute, that it was not subject to change over a lifetime, and that it could be measured and individuals could be ranked and assigned their place in society accordingly. The SAT evolved from these questionable assumptions about human talent and potential.

    More and more people are questioning the validity of SAT . In the past MENSA used to accept high SAT score individuals . For the past decade it has stopped accepting SAT scores .

    The whole exercise of deciding merit based on CAT scores discriminates against those from lower socio-economic status.

    Though many non-IIM institutes have started accepting CAT scores, the application fee of these institutes is still inexplicably high.

    The CAT is primarily an exam of Math and English. Logical and Analytical Reasoning is nearly absent (except for some verbal reasoning which again depends on knowing English well!!!!).

    CAT is a clever way to keep those from lower socio-economic strata away Institutes funded with tax payers money .

    So claims of “Merit” based on CAT scores is hollow and discriminatory against those of lower socio-economic strata.

    Dhirubhai Ambani had a poor command over English . He would not have made it through CAT. So what "merit" are we talking of?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:28 AM  

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