My Reservations on... Reservations!

India has long been hailed as the largest democracy in the world.. yes that's true in terms of population. Our constitution is very in depth and our policy making has been superb. The judicial and educational systems have all been based on the British model. Indians are thus, known to be fairly well off when it comes to planning and policy making.

The beauty of policy making though, is that no matter how great the policy is - the implementation has to be done equally well. India is pathetic at implementing policies. Our constitution is based on us being secular and that no one should be discriminated on the basis of caste, creed or race. That's very fair, as we are a very much a secular nation. In striving for 'equality', our leaders today are making huge mistakes - one of the biggest in my opinion would be the reservation or quota system in education.

Reservation is a certain amount of admissions withheld for a certain class of the society by an institution (which can be up to 50% of the total admissions). After the Mandal Commission released their reports in 1992, Backward Class and Other Backward Class got a considerable amount of concessions and exemptions and the Forward Community has been suffering since. Reservations discriminate in a very subtle way. They are based on the premise that people in the Backward Communities don't have money and that the Forward Communities do. Fair enough. What about the brains though? A university in Chennai requires the people of the forward community to get 98% (agg) to enter. Backward classes need around 70% - and all the students will invariably be mixed up in the same classes!

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have now implemented a 33% OBC reservation. The entrances are tough enough as it is, with people needing to score the 99th percentile to get in. Where do people from the forward communities get a chance then? Then, people look abroad and it is said 'brain drain is a big problem in India!’ Brain Drain isn't the problem genius; it is the absurd reservation policies we have in place which are.

Reservations also have their impact on the quality of students who are eventually 'produced'. They also provoke forgery of certificates of various individuals in the forward community. Educational Institutes ask for obscene amounts of money in the name of 'capitation’ for those students who didn't make the cut off - an impossible mark to get for an average student. The ramifications of reservations are thus undesirable.

The rates of poverty have declined at a slower rate than the increase in the rates of educational reservations over the past 20 years. If you want to support the backward classes, you must alleviate them from their dire situation. We have been slow to do this and now reservations have been put firmly in place to satisfy political needs. The quality of education and quality of students will definitely be on the decline. India will still produce very enterprising individuals due to the sheer density of population, but the potential of many people will be wasted by a political issue.

So then how is this in line with our constitution, which strives for a secular republic? How are we ignoring the class, caste and creed of the people? The reservations which were intended against discrimination are now unfortunately a medium of discrimination against a certain sect of people.

At times the implementation of the policy does not reflect what the policy makers set out to do.. we certainly see that in India.