QUOTA-SOCIAL JUSTICE or POLITICAL GIMICRY....AN INTROSPECTION

The youth in india are standing at a critical juncture in their lives as they are left to ponder whether family lineage will play an important part in the development of their carrers.This may sound strange to people but that is what is happening in India with the government deciding to implement 27% quota for the Other Backward Classes in educational instituitions of international repute like the IIT s and IIMs in the name of social justice to these people.Indeed there is a vast majority of people in India who do not have access to quality education inspite of having the requisite talent due to the severe financial constraints.These people should be given special privileges and considerations but such poor people are present everywhere in India and not limited to the SCs, STs and OBCs.But to develop the overall educational conditions of these socially backward people we need a robust primary education system where the poor people are given free education till the primary levels and economic incentives are given to these people for attending schools and passing different classes successfully.The rationale behind this kind of suggestion of mine is that there is a very large dropout rate among the poor students in the primary classes.The main reason for this is that the people in the rural areas are more concerned about earning some amount of money to obtain two square meals a day rather than focussing on education because they do not understand the long term values of education...they onl;y see the instant advaantages..that is money to make a living.This is the major reason for child labour and drop outs from govt primary schools.
unless the primary education setup is improved there will be no improvement of the economically backward by implementing quotas in higher educational institutes.This is like building a skyscraper on a foundation of quicksand, and such a foundation will never withstand the test of time..it is destined to fail,it can only satisfy the short term votebank politics of these selfish political leaders who only understand votes and for them the deciding factor is the votes of the minority communities. So this implementation of quota is nothing but providing an illusion to these people that the govt is concerned about their wellfare when they are actually concerned about their votes.
Right now in Central government educational institutions, around 77 per cent of the seats are open to competition and if the same numbers are to be retained after providing for the reservation of 27 per cent for the OBCs, the seats available will have to be increased to 154 per cent of the current levels.
In seeking to implement the reservations scheme, the Government should bear in mind three imperatives. First, if the institutions are to take in additional numbers, it must get serious about strengthening their physical and academic infrastructure, including faculty, that is already under strain.
Secondly, in the larger interests of the nation, some institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management need to be retained as islands of excellence, their entrance standards uncompromised even by socially desirable goals. If these institutions are able to provide education of a quality that could match the standards anywhere in the world, it is largely because the intensely competitive admission processes bring in students of the highest calibre. There may be debates over the right way of testing "merit", but in an educational institution any move away from an assessment of academic attainment and academic potential towards non-academic criteria would inevitably compromise standards.
Thirdly, there is the danger that, as has happened too often in different states, affirmative action would be seen as having been completed with the institution of quotas at the university stage. The task of strengthening the public school system that caters to the socially and educationally disadvantaged, as well as special enrichment programmes that would level the field are equally important and brook no delay.
The effect of the ramshackled primary education can be seen in the IITs and IIMs even now because though 22.5% of the seats are reserved for the SCs and STs a large portion of these allotted seats remain vacant.To perove my point i would like to put forward what UGC Chairman Thorat said "At higher education levels 1.2 lakh seats of reserved category are vacant"
If you don't believe my point just have a look at the link i have provided here: http://www.youthforequality.in/higher-education.jsp and all your doubts will be cleared on the malaise called the caste based quota system.
Another demerit of the caste based quota system is that the people who will enjoy reservation may have the requisite talent but since they will know that they can enter any educational institute on the basis of their caste may prompt them to not to put that much effort in their studies.
The call of the hour is to implement reservations based on economic conditions and not on the basis of caste...and that reservation should also be in the fees required to be paid and not in the qualification category except in some very exceptional cases where the applicant is very poor and does not have access to any education resource but still has a prodigious talent and for that a monitoring agency should be set up.But before implementing quota in institutes of higher education the infrastructure of colleges and primary schools should be improved drastically to increase the enthusiasm and interest of the backward classes in education.This will serve two twin purposes in rural areas all over India...1. to increase the literacy rate in an unprecedcented way...even better than the sarva siksha abhiyaan and 2. to reduce the quantum of child labour practise in India.
On a concluding note i would like to add that as Shekhar Gupta has said in one of his editorials in the Indian Express, the (reservation) system “is the last — but perhaps the most destructive — relic of the licence quota raj“.