‘Affirmative’? yes, but not enough ‘action’.

Hi,

Below is a post I wrote on reservation for the ‘Youth Forum of SASTRA‘ blog.

Read on…

‘Bhrat Ratna’ B.R.Ambedkar did not anticipate reservation to become this big a debate, in my opinion.

We all know his oft repeated rags to riches tale. Bright, lower caste student becomes a barrister , fights for the so called ‘un-touch-able-s’ and participates in the freedom movement, goes on to chair the Constitution Drafting Committee, becomes the first ever law minister of Independent India and does all this while he opposes Gandhi and the India National Congress.

The Indian constitution proclaims proudly that all citizens have the right to speech, the right to protest peacefully, the right to say anything against anyone. I don’t think these are guaranteed anymore. Forget politics, try cursing at Rajinikanth in a movie theater- I won’t be surprised if you have a broken nose after that.

So in a country where the universal laws of the constitution are itself not properly implemented, an affirmative action policy going wrong is expected.

In which-ever country reservation exists (most countries call it affirmative action), it exists as a means for a minority people to come up socially. Reservation in India however, helps the majority of the population. In fact right now, near about 70% of the population of Tamil Nadu is eligible for reservation under some category or the other.

Enough of blasting away against this policy, lets look at it from a different perspective.

Reservation was supposed to be a policy that would allow “historically backward communities” to come up. In fact reservation does not work properly (like many of the government’s noble schemes), because it is not advertised well. The people who require it most, don’t even know that it exists and, the people who know that they are eligible for it, probably do not require it at all. So anyone who says caste politics is the only reason for reservation’s existence today, is clearly not looking at the full picture.

Now setting a time limit for reservation, to act on its own and bring people up?

1. It didn’t work before
2. The idea is very passive.

In fact reservation itself is very passive policy.

The creamy layer policy looks like it is our best solution, but tell me, in a country which has a per capita lesser than the annual consumption of colas in the U.S, how do you define a creamy layer. Moreover, if people can get their caste status changed, naturally they’d find means to evade income tax, which is the main factor in calculating the ‘creamy layer’.

My point of view for a long time has been this: reservation will never work on its own, it needs another policy or action to be successfully implemented. So how do we resolve this?

Government funded universities/colleges, is my reply.

Queer? Well here is the situation today. The money that the government allots to these universities is from the tax we pay. What happens to it? It goes to work in I.T or goes abroad – ‘thank you tax payers’.

Instead what should we do. We should mobilize the students. If students from every university there is in India, would contribute (say during their course of study) to the development of villages or towns, and spread the message that eduction is the most efficient means to climb up the social ladder – viola we have a solution.

Not just government funded institutes, even private institutes should adopt this plan.

SASTRA has a set-up similar to this, so do a few other colleges. We’ve all heard about it. And what are the NSS, NCC for ?

The problem with the existing plans is, they are sporadic efforts, inconsistent and even if consistent, small scale.

I would suggest large scale implementation, every student should contribute to the development of at least one socially backward child.

Reservation should be locale dependent. If you’ve lived in a village or a town all you life, you should be given first preference for reservation.

I know my idea is a bit rough and needs to be contemplated upon. At least that is a start. Instead of saying I’ll give you so many seats, the government should say I’ll help you so much, and reserve a few seats too.

Reduce reservation, increase out reach and active propagation. That’s my idea.

Your welcome to disagree or build upon this idea. After all what are youth forums for?

Cheers
Kaber

P.S: More articles by Kaber Vasuki here.