The basis for this reservation is based on the recommedation from the Mandal commission. and hence this commission has been in eye of storm since its recommedations were accepted. People on both side of this debate have attacked Mandal commission for providing the reservation based on castes. This charge is ill founded. The commission in fact used 11 social, economic and educational indicators which were worked out through sceintific investigation involving experts from various discliplines to identify the backward classes. Even a cursory look at these indicators can tell you that it has nothing to do with the castes. Befor levelling any accusations at the commmission, the opponents of reservation should look at their own conduct. Their protests smack of their high handedness and their insensitivenss towards the lower rungs of society. They behave as if no social inequality exists in the society !! The projection of reservation based on castes , which is actually not, shows the caste bias prevailing in their mind. The reality is that we need reservation because of the existing caste divide in the society and not the other way around.
The opposers of reservation argue that instead of providing reservation in higher education government should pay attention to primary education. They are right in their demand. But whether they really want this to happen is quite doubtful. The organisations(like Youth for equality) who take to streets on the very next day for theit anit-reservation protests have failed to hit the steets even once for the demand of improvemnet of primary education. In fact no one talked for it for nearly 2 yeras when their was a hearing going on in Supreme court (and the verdict seem to be going in their favour). But with the current infrastructure that government has, it might take another 50 years or even more to bring any significant improvement. In a country which has failed to provide proper meals three times a day to its people, the talk of giving free education sounds like a cruel joke. So using this as a ground to block reservation to the needy is an intelligent way to make sure that these people never become a part of the mainstream of the society.
Many people oppose reservation because it has failed to achieve its goals in tha last 60 years. True, we didn't got the results as we expected out of it, in many cases it failed to reach the needy people. But did anybody bothered to know the reasons behind it? In our country the top law makin bodies(parliaments, cabinets, secretariats), law enforcing agencies(central and state bueraucracies), even media have been dominated by people coming from the forward sections of the society(who constitute less then 20% of poulation) . And when your top decision making bodies have been heavily dominated by only one section of society, they ensured that the benefits of reservation didn't percolate down to the needy people. No wonder that many poor sections of the society are still not aware of the resrvation provided to them by the government. To ensure that reservation really achieves its purpose, its essential that people from the backward classes get proportionate representation in the power centres. And hence providing reservation in rea power centres like IAS, IITs and IIMs is the right step in this direction.With the reservation in IITs and IIMs , the talk of increase in brain drain is gaining ground.To me in this of era of globalisation and liberalisation the brain drain does not holds water. There is talent on one side and money on other. In a free market like this no one can control brain drain when everone keeps looking for greener pastures.
In a country like ours which has deep rooted fedual mindset and caste biases among the people, reservation is inescapable.Even after 60 years of independence, we still have our 80% of population ruled by rest 20%. The concept of democracy becomes meaningless if the power remains concentrated only in a few hands. So, despite how much concern we raise against the reservations, it is the need of the hour to create truly just society.
