Reservations in India

India just took a step backwards. The Americans, the Chinese and other competitors can take a sigh of relief. The government announced that it would implement another 27% reservations in educational institutes from the academic session commencing June 2007. This country cannot remain competitive anymore.

The reservations, or quotas, as they're popularly referred to in India, have always been a hotly debated topic. The Indian version of Affirmative Action, they were initiated in the 1950s to help the "oppressed castes" to come up to speed. Originally meant to be implemented for a period of 10 years, they've gone from strength to strength, not only managing to be in existance for about 50 years, but also increasing from 22.5% to now almost 50%.

This affirmative action comes at a tremendous cost though. The cost of denying admission to thousands of extremely deserving students from the "upper castes" who fail to make it to the Institutes they want to go to, because their seats are handed over to someone from the "lower caste". And the cost of decrease in the Nation's productivity.

Naturally, reservations have left a bitter taste in the mouth of the upper castes, who have endured them for 2 generations now. Worse, the beneficiaries of the reservations are mostly the rich in the lower castes. To add insult to the injury, many of them are second or third generation beneficiaries of the reservations.

Many students from the lower castes, are not capable of making full use of the reservations, and take the convoluted (and consequently longer) path to graduate, sometimes failing multiple times. The build-up of resentment also causes them to be looked down upon by the students from the upper castes. All this causes many to drop out of the very Institutes for which another meritorious student was denied entry.

In an opportunity-strapped nation like India, where extreme competition exists for getting admission into choicest Institutes, the reservations are resented by the upper castes who view them as a wrong to correct another wrong.

Solutions to problems cannot be found at the same level at which the problems arose. The government, oblivious of its responsibilities plays vote-bank politics and closes its eyes on the reality.

Till the government does not see the upper castes as a vote bank, I am afraid, the upper castes are going to be treated as lower castes in this country.